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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758090">birefringence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaermorons/pseuds/kaermorons'>kaermorons</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Witcher Jaskier Fics [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Jaskier | Dandelion, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Heist, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sparring, Witcher Jaskier | Dandelion, malaphors</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 10:40:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23758090</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaermorons/pseuds/kaermorons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After finding out Jaskier's true identity as a Witcher, Geralt allows himself to be taken along for the ride on a Witcher's Path.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Countess Mignole/Vesemir (The Witcher), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Witcher Jaskier Fics [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696759</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>138</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Interesting Character and/or Interesting Relationship Development</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. don't let them see your back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiswhitewolf/gifts">hiswhitewolf</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>All chapter titles will be taken from the song Our Lady of Sorrows by My Chemical Romance.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The letter was stamped with a lupine seal in green wax and written in a legible scrawl that the messenger could readily understand. The messenger understood even more from the glare given by its sender, and both had the letter on its way out of the city walls long before he was meant to go out. His nightly sprint to and from the town between Oxenfurt and Rinde was very familiar by now. Pontar on his right, he ran until he hit his mark, depositing and refilling his bag.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laid the letter with the green wax on the very top, pointing to it and saying “this should go out as quickly as possible,” before he’d even caught his own breath. The postmaster at the station in Bigon nodded and tucked it into the basket that went out with the dawn rider.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next messenger took his prepared satchel as the sun rose. The postmaster, eyes ringed with dark circles, pulled at the young rider’s arm and said, “You get there as fast as that horse lets you, you hear me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though the messenger line did not understand the nature of the urgency, it was a request that was heeded. The green-stamped letter rode along to Vizima, where the network halted its movement for a day, as letters were sorted through the Viziman postmaster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It landed safely in Kaedwen, in the Ard Carraigh postmaster’s custody. The green seal on the back of the envelope held true, and had not frayed one bit in its now-weeklong journey across the Continent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, the outgoing messenger in Ard Carriagh had decided to sit down for a light meal and an ale just before heading out toward his route. As he did, satchel full of letters and light packages, he noticed two travelers at a nearby table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One looked older than the other at first glance. He had white hair past his shoulders, and held himself with a weathered intensity normally seen in town elders and the sellswords that had made it to retirement. At his back lay two longswords. The messenger recognized him as a Witcher almost immediately.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The second traveler, on the other hand, was harder to place. With his face turned slightly away, the messenger could only guess at his appearance, but the swords on his hip and the old-looking armor led him to believe this, too, was a Witcher. The confusing aspect of this second man was that there was an oiled leather lute case at his side. A Witcher with a lute? How strange. This man even laughed, head thrown back in delight. The messenger, as traveled as he was, had never seen nor heard of a Witcher laughing at anything. He took this revelation as his cue to leave the tavern, mounting his horse and taking off without another thought spared to the pair inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two hand-offs later, the letter landed in Herch, at the base of the mountain Kaer Morhen resided upon. The last messenger passed the message the first had given: “This should get to its recipient as quickly as possible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Naturally, it spent three days in a basket until a Witcher traipsed into the building with a nod. There was an agreement between the people of Herch and the Wolves of Kaer Morhen: don’t interfere with us, and we shall respect you at the very least. It was a better agreement than most Witchers came across along the Path.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The post keeper’s assistant shook as he handed over the letter with the green seal. The Witcher regarded the addressee’s name for a moment, checked the seal, and popped it open right there. It was read once, twice, golden eyes flicking over the important details. He read it again just to make the poor man behind the table squirm, and then, with a bark of laughter, shook his head. “Those two are gonna be in a world of surprise when they walk into Oxenfurt. Good thing they’re already on their way.” The assistant felt ready to faint, when the Witcher smirked and asked for a quill.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The trip to Oxenfurt was decided only a day after Geralt’s confession and apology on the parapets of Kaer Morhen. The Path was calling both of them, and neither were the kind to deny it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As they lazed through the towns with no direction in mind, Jaskier considered he liked this pace, but not any better or any less than he liked trudging along on foot beside Geralt for the last dozen-odd years. He liked it differently. The time spent on horseback was much less draining, which allowed him to drift more further into his thoughts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Normally, when he was left thinking alone for too long, he’d depress himself with memories of those long dead to him, which was why he preferred walking. However, when they were traversing a relatively flat and less-than-treacherous trail between towns, Jaskier would pull out a journal and page through it lovingly, tracing his fingers along the penmanship. Geralt’s hands were still stained with ink. Having these happy memories, ones where his ghosts were still alive, helped ease the fears he normally got when gambling at a daydream.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was also the matter of how Geralt had managed to hide just how nicely he stuck his arse out when he rode.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a hesitant thing, their relationship. They’d kissed maybe three times since Geralt had given Jaskier the books, and as much as his romantic heart clawed at the doors for more, Jaskier knew he’d have to take his time with Geralt. They still took lodgings in one room, Geralt’s arms tucked safely around his body, but there were no gentle kisses to send him to sleep or wake him to the day. Jaskier feared he’d be laughed at or worse if he brought up his desires.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time they made it past Vizima, Jaskier was restless. The training and combat they’d grown used to in Kaer Morhen among other Witchers was much more intense than sitting on a horse for hours and occasionally bathing in a stream. It was summer, which meant the beasts were going to come out to play any day. When Jaskier brought up the idea of taking a contract, Geralt’s first instinct was to tell him no.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No? What do you mean, no? As far as you know I’m the older one here. You haven’t been able to successfully tell me to stay out of danger before, so. There. Solves it.” Jaskier nodded, tucking his book away. He’d replace the ones in his cabinet at the Countess’ place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Solves nothing. I’ve only seen you take down a few beasts that attacked us first, and your hunting instincts are probably out of date.” Geralt said, matter-of-factly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier sputtered. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Out of date?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt smirked. “We’ll train together. Stop early tonight, somewhere in the woods. Let you show me what you’ve got.” The notion of getting hot and heavy among sharp objects with </span>
  <em>
    <span>the </span>
  </em>
  <span>Geralt of Rivia made his stomach flip where others had flopped. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, Geralt held to his word, and as soon as the horses were taken care of and a few snares set for dinner, they found a nice clearing to practice in. Geralt went over how they’d be training with almost as much disinterest as Jaskier was paying attention to him. He was going to spar with Geralt.</span>
</p><hr/><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>
      <span>Vesemir,</span>
    </em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>
      <span>Your letter, despite the frightened pages left in its wake, reached Kaer Morhen too late for Geralt and Jaskier to read it. Luckily, they’re already on their way to Oxenfurt, so you can intercept them at their arrival. Shit news about the armor, really. Don’t see a lot of Viper gear just out and about these days. Truth be told, the only Viper out there seems to have a lute as part of his gear. I hope these pageboys run faster on the return than their departure from Oxenfurt.</span>
    </em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>
      <span>Lambert</span>
    </em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p>
  <span>The Witcher folded the parchment in three and sealed it with black wax, pressing his medallion into the seal until it hardened. “How many handoffs from here to Oxenfurt?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Six or seven, depends on the route.” The shaking post master’s assistant replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Witcher pulled out his coin purse and loosed the ties, dumping a fair stack of coins into the assistant’s hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Make it two.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>They hadn’t gone up against one another in Kaer Morhen, though they’d each faced off against Lambert and Eskel a few times before their departure. When questioned on Geralt’s avoidance of Jaskier in the training ring, he’d shrugged and said something about a list of grievances landing a killing blow. Something like that, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As they took their positions among the meadow grass, Jaskier could hardly contain his excitement. Geralt, he knew, still saw him as his weak little bard, and planned to use that to his advantage. Geralt had seen a little of what Jaskier could do in a fight, from what he’d done in the ring, but Jaskier had been watching Geralt fight up close for over sixteen years. He had the upper hand, but chose not to show it. Not yet, at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt drew his steel sword, not wanting to unnecessarily damage his silver blade. Jaskier pulled out his own steel sword, though it was about a quarter of the size of Geralt’s.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t go easy on me, now,” Jaskier teased, smirking as he flexed his grip on the leather-wrapped handle. Their sparring started out seemingly hesitant, but just as Jaskier had probed at Lambert’s defenses before attacking, he was doing the same with Geralt. “Gods, being on this side of that glare is rather turning me on. It’ll warm my heart til the cows freeze over.” Jaskier said, mock-wiping his brow and fanning himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you always attempt to seduce your opponents?” Geralt quipped dryly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s the bard in me.” Jaskier shrugged. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it.” At long last, he lunged forward, and the fight began in earnest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They danced around one another, parrying and lunging in turn. They both didn’t want this spar to end too quickly, and wordlessly passed the defensive and offensive moves back and forth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finally, Jaskier made a wrong step, and Geralt came down on him with a downward stroke, all his weight behind it. Jaskier huffed at the impact, on the back foot. Locked in steel against steel, Geralt shifted his grip from two hands to one, and gave a flick of his wrist in a circle parry, the sudden rotation making Jaskier shout and lose his grip.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sword went flying away, landing in the dirt with a flat </span>
  <em>
    <span>crrrrang. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jaskier watched it for a moment before lowering his stance and narrowing his eyes at Geralt dangerously. Geralt knew that Jaskier had two moves that he shouldn’t underestimate. The first was climbing onto the back of whatever he was trying to attack, and ride it until he could get it to submit. The other was attacking an armed opponent while he had no weapon. Both facts were incredibly annoying to Geralt, but he hardly had time to ruminate on it when Jaskier charged him, the sword forgotten behind him where Geralt had flipped it out of his hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt braced for impact and caught his wrist as it reached for his sword arm across the space between them, and Jaskier smirked, folding his thumb in, and bending his first finger down. “Aard,” he invoked. Geralt was stunned as his sword went flying from his hand, a few feet away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were suddenly rolling, wrestling one another into the earth. Where Geralt was all bulk and brawn, Jaskier had a lithe form and hip power that surprised any up against him. Jaskier was able to get Geralt in a particularly complicated hold, with him on his front, legs crossed and suspended up in the air. Jaskier’s arm looped through the window created by Geralt’s thighs. Jaskier was indeed sitting atop Geralt’s lower back, rather pleased with himself as he exerted almost no force against the Witcher beneath him. It was distracting and sexy and intimate, Jaskier’s hips pressed right against the curve of Geralt’s ass. “Not so fun being </span>
  <em>
    <span>sat on,</span>
  </em>
  <span> hmm?” Jaskier teased, breath coming in short pants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly spurred by the need to get the upper hand again, Geralt levered himself to his side using his shoulders. It hurt to twist his body like that, but the maneuver worked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt pinned Jaskier’s wrists to the dusty dirt, grip firm and tight but not hurting. Jaskier squirmed a little, legs reaching up to wrap around Geralt’s hips in an attempt to flip them again, but Geralt held true in a wide stance on the dirt. They were both half-hard at just the exertion and physical closeness of their sparring. Jaskier’s eyes almost fluttered shut as Geralt leaned forward, hair tickling at his face as he went in for—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A sudden twig snapping at the tree line broke them from their hazy reverie. Geralt was off him and up on his feet in a moment, sword recovered and raised aloft. Jaskier sprang up a moment later, casting his eyes about the treeline. “I count ten.” Geralt murmured, under his breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s two more in the trees with bows.” Jaskier said back, just as softly. “If you cover me to the packs I can grab my knives and deal with them.” Geralt was of half a mind to tell him to stay here in the clearing, they’d be better off with two sets of eyes than just one, but Geralt nodded. The archers would make things difficult if things went south for their men on the ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On my signal.” Geralt said, hardly a whisper to anybody without Witcher hearing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A voice rang out of the treeline, condescending and mean. “Now, Witcher, we don’t want no trouble here! Just yer coin, maybe that fancy silver you got on ye.” Laughter filtered in from all around, and Jaskier flicked his eyes to the two trees the archers had placed themselves in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got em.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They moved as one to their packs, Geralt covering Jaskier as he dove under the sharp whizz of an arrow going past his head. “If you could cover me, that’d be nice!” Jaskier hissed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut up.” Jaskier’s hands went deep in his bags, cutting up his fingers just a little while grabbing the badly-packed blades. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I knew I shouldn’t have let Geralt pack my bag for me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright. We’re good. Break off over there, draw their attention.” Jaskier held his knives in his slightly bloody hands. “Catch you later, Witcher.” With a last smirk, he vanished into the underbrush.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt, on the other hand, was having a hard time reconciling the Jaskier that went readily into battle, not minding a little of his own blood on his hands, and the Jaskier who paled at the sight of Geralt covered in innards, the Jaskier who considered dirt to be a cosmic mistake. He’d have to be careful not to underestimate him again, their sparring proved that he was just this side of soft on the bard. Witcher. On the Jaskier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pushed his daydreaming to the side as he drew out the forces within the trees. Five men emerged, mostly at his front and sides. Geralt knew better than to leave his back open. The bandit who had spoken before was not in this group, most likely hanging back in case things got hairy. That left another six that Jaskier would be dealing with. The thought made his heart flip. Jaskier wasn’t even well-armored. Armed, yes, but all he had for protection were some vambraces a size too large for him and some soft leather shoulder pieces. Geralt threw a taunt at the men, and they sneered at him before attacking all at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Why humans repeatedly decided to test themselves in battle against a fucking Witcher, Geralt didn’t know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two went down quickly with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it slashes to the gut, and the sudden stench of blood in the air frightened the rest just a little. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Good.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The remaining three formed a triangle around him, and with a loud charging cry, Geralt blocked the sword with his own and gave his attacker a swift punch to the throat, followed by a sweep of his feet which sent him clattering to the ground and his sword flying away from his hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other two were a little smarter, waiting for Geralt’s attention to be pulled before making their move. He sensed the blow coming and rolled his shoulder with it, letting his armor take most of the blade as he regained his footing. He adjusted his grip on his sword so he could better fight in close quarters and took them down in a hot blur of steel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the ground was littered with blood, he stepped from the treeline and had to strafe quickly to the left before an arrow embedded itself deep in the tree next to his head. He frowned at it. “Thought you would have it handled!” Geralt called to Jaskier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a brief pulse of Aard and a grunt, before Geralt could hear Jaskier snapping a bow with his hands and mocking what Geralt had just said in a higher voice. That’s his Jaskier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rushed in to help, but by the time he laid eyes on Jaskier, he’d definitely handled the other half of the bandits. “Where’s our ringleader?” Jaskier asked, panting as he held pressure on a slash across his chest. Geralt removed his hand to look at it better, frowning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t kill him. Maybe he ran off.” Geralt looked around, scenting the air and quieting his breathing to concentrate on his senses. Hearing and sensing nothing else, he took his prediction as correct. “If you’re going to fight slowly, you need to be armored.” he chided.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, yes, thank you, mother.” Jaskier rolled his eyes but did not step away from Geralt’s light, careful touches. “I was planning on getting a set made in Oxenfurt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt nodded, expression still tight, but kicking himself for sending Jaskier off alone. “Let’s clean up our mess, hm?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They spent the next hour stacking and burning the bodies in a pile, looting what little supplies and money the bandits had on them. “Big group. Camp’s probably nearby.” Geralt observed, as Jaskier moved to wash off his hands and wound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Best not go looking, lest our ringleader return with backup. He may not have been the sharpest tree in the forest, going after two Witchers, but numbers are numbers.” Jaskier nodded, and they quickly readied their horses to set out on the road once more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before they could mount up and leave, a quiet, suspended weight filled the air between them. Their blood was still thick with adrenaline and the heat of battle. Jaskier called Geralt’s name softly, voice hoarse with desire. They were a little cleaned up, but still filthy from wrestling around in the dirt before, and dead men’s blood. When Geralt met his eyes, he understood. “I think we were rather in the middle of something before those bandits rudely interrupted us, hmm?” Geralt gave a slow smile. Jaskier leaned against a tree, exposing his neck and looking down his nose at Geralt as he drew nearer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hmm, yes.” Jaskier purred, hand reaching up to wrap around the back of Geralt’s neck, pulling him down into a searing kiss. Drunk on the feeling of Geralt’s body pressed against his, Jaskier moaned into it, eliciting a growl from the other Witcher.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt’s hands felt like liquid fire as they pressed against his back and waist, holding him in place with a lovely squeeze that shot lightning up Jaskier’s spine. Tongues moved against one another in a slick dance, and the ferocity of their passion meant their teeth clacked together a few times. Jaskier’s hand went up to curl into the hair at the base of Geralt’s skull, holding it firmly in his grasp but not pulling. This close, Jaskier could feel Geralt’s breath hitch, followed by a high, needy whine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps he got a bit too excited at that noise, reaching his other hand up to grab at Geralt and twinging the wound on his chest. He hissed and gasped through the pain, jerking away from the motion. The tension and cloying lust in the air dispersed like startled birds. Geralt’s eyes, still blown wide in desire, raked over his body to check for more wounds, more pain. His hands had moved to his shoulders, so Jaskier couldn’t hide from the inspection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll pick this up at a later time.” Jaskier panted, grimacing at the pull of skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.” Geralt muttered, a dark look clouding his features.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not your fault, don’t say that.” Jaskier said, managing a small smile. “C’mon. Let’s find somewhere else to camp for the night.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Letter from Kaer Morhen, my lord,” a steward said, setting down lunch along with the message. “It’s postmarked two days ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Vesemir thanked the young man and waved him away, earlier appetite pushed to the side momentarily. Countess Mignole set down her book as he opened the black seal and read its brief message. “Damn.” he muttered as he reached the end. “Word never got to them in time before they left.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Left? Where? We could send a page and intercept them.” She reached for the letter, which was freely given. “So all of you seal your letters like this?” she asked, amused after she had read her answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Best not to carry signet rings while on the road. One gets pinched, and-” Vesemir made a flinging gesture and an accompanying </span>
  <em>
    <span>whoosh.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “-off goes the finger.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Interesting.” The Countess rose, to look out the window of the library. It was a place, Vesemir noted, very common for her to retreat to when she felt at a loss for words or plans. He hadn’t found anything particularly interesting from the vantage, but it was obvious she saw something out there that he didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s easy enough to ask the sentries to keep an eye out for them, send them to us.” Vesemir said, finally starting in on his lunch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t want to draw attention to us right now. I have a few spies who can watch and observe and report to us when they arrive.” Vesemir nodded, a rare feeling of fondness growing in his chest. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s been decades and she still never ceases to surprise me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well then. Let’s hope they get here in one piece.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Two travelers who had baffled a messenger some days prior walked slowly across the bridge leading to Oxenfurt. They were chatting easily as they led their horses by their reins, though one was clearly more animated than the other.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A man leaning against some crates from Temeria feigned indifference, but when he recognized the travelers, his eyes flashed and followed them to the stables. Slowly, he meandered a fair distance behind the two. The taller one had the most astounding shade of white hair, making it difficult to lose them to the crowds. They pop into a shop, and at first, the quiet watcher was sure they’d make a purchase and leave the city, but they stayed for over an hour, and when they came out, they headed north, away from the city gates. “Right. Campus should be still fairly crowded, but we can walk around, through East Ox,” the more animated one said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Taking his chance, the runner sped off toward the Countess’ manor.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. to think immortality never meant dying</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Oxenfurt was finally in their sights, Geralt asked Jaskier exactly what he needed to get in town.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not just a supply run, Geralt.” Jaskier said. “I need to apologize to a friend, the one who makes the glamour. Perhaps even beg for a replacement before we go on the road.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think you look fine.” Geralt frowned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As much as I appreciate that, Geralt, I do...like I said before, it’s not only you that has to look at...this.” He gestured vaguely to his face, the side with the scars from the fire. He gave a small, sad smile. “Still not over it, really.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt said nothing else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They stabled their horses on the eastern side of the city. Instantly, Geralt recognized they were nearing the place where he’d made Jaskier burn his own journals. His eyes stayed locked on the brazier up on the wall until they walked into the small shop Geralt had followed Jaskier to the first time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a neat, purple-tinged shop, walls lined with delicate glass bottles and trinkets. A cozy table with four chairs sat off-center, decorated with more magical miscellany. A voice called out from the back and grew louder by the second. “Julian Alfred Pankrantz, I thought I told you if you ever came back I’d take both your—oh, hello.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A short woman dressed in a sapphire-colored dress stormed into the room. Though her hair was wrapped in a secure headdress, she had a wild, untamed look about her. Control and calm smoothed her beautiful features as she laid eyes on the both of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lita, this is Geralt. Geralt, meet Amelita of Wendstone, sorceress beyond compare and legal deed-holder of my balls.” Jaskier looked delighted to see her, and laid two polite kisses to her cheeks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enchanted.” Geralt deadpanned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, not yet.” Lita winked, and turned to Jaskier. “You, however, I should hex you for darkening my doorstep.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, whatever doesn’t kill you will try, and try again. I have indeed come to apologize, my dear.” He launched into a lovely bit of prose which Geralt tuned out, but she seemed to appreciate the clearly-prepared lamentation of his own stupidity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Enough, enough!” Lita said, laughing. She laid a hand on Jaskier’s chest, eliciting a small wince. “What’s this? Who did this?” She practically shredded away the shirt and bandages over his wound he’d gotten two days prior. It still smarted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re dead already, Lita, and I’m not.” Jaskier smiled. Geralt observed the two with interest. There had never been secrets between the two, and their camaraderie was obvious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can fix that,” she grumbled. “The them-being-dead part, not the you-being-not-dead part.” She waved her hand dismissively and turned in a whirl. “So. Tell me what you need, you obviously need something of me if you’re back in this state.” She motioned for them to take seats at the small table and returned in a flash with two steaming cups of tea and a large tankard of ale, which she set down in front of Geralt. “I get that right?” She smiled, joining them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I like you.” Geralt gave a rare smile. Jaskier sputtered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As much as I love seeing my friends get along, that is a combination forged in hell.” He forced the tankard up to Geralt’s mouth to keep him from talking, and turned to Lita. “Right. We’re going out on the Path, but I think I need another glamour, or something at least to hide my face when I need it.” Lita nodded. “Do you have a good blacksmith you trust in town? Discreet is best.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know the one for the job. You’ll find him just north of the campus. His name is Marcha. Let him know I sent you and you’ll be treated with priority. By the time he’s finished, I’ll be finished with your glamour. I’ll bill you then, you won’t like the quote.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier sipped his tea. “Figured,” he shrugged. Geralt was content to watch the exchange until Lita turned her sights on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about you? Anything nice I can do for you too?” Lita leered. Jaskier rolled his eyes and took Geralt’s ale instead, taking a long gulp from it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve got everything I need.” Geralt said boldly, laying his hand on Jaskier’s hand so surprisingly that Jaskier choked on the ale.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How lovely. It’ll be about a week for what you’ve asked for.” Lita said, a warm smile on her face now. “Marcha will be about the same. Please feel free to stop in whenever you’d like, you’re my friend, not just a customer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They spent another hour in the shop before leaving, winding their way through the maze of East Ox, until the city spat them out at the shopfront of a blacksmith ‘just north of the campus’. It was nondescript, but when they walked in Geralt’s medallion and Jaskier’s rings began to tremble. They shared a look and walked further in to investigate. It had, by all means, every appearance of a regular human’s smithy, but when an elf walked out from the back wearing a black apron and a smear of grease on his face, things began to make sense.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Marcha?” Jaskier ventured, noticing the elf’s not quite at-ease stance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who’s asking?” the elf said, crossing his thick, muscled arms over his chest. Jaskier held up his hands in supplication and smiled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lita recommended you to us. My name is Jaskier and this is—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geralt of Rivia. The </span>
  <em>
    <span>thruster of elves far back on their shelves.”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jaskier winced at his own words. “Forgive me if it’s not a coin I wish to toss your way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, yes, well, that was rather almost eighteen years ago when I wrote that, and—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your words.” The elf clarified. “You’re Lita’s Witcher.” Geralt bristled at the description of Jaskier being anybody but his own person, but kept calm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That I am, my good man. Elf. May I call you Marcha?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier and Marcha chattered away across a counter about what he’d want commissioned. When he heard Jaskier and Marcha start to argue the merits of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>cape,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Geralt went to seek dinner for them, and was just joining the two again when a hand grasped his arm, firm and strong. Geralt whirled to face…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Vesemir.” Geralt breathed, calming his tense shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geralt. Is Jaskier near? We have news. I sent a letter but it missed you.” Vesemir spoke quickly, and Geralt noticed a woman standing with him. She was dressed as a noble would, with a cool expression on her beautiful, aged features.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s inside. Countess Mignole, I presume.” Geralt bowed his head politely, and Vesemir held back a smile at his manners.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve raised a fine son, Vesemir,” the Countess said, a small smile on her lips. “It’s very nice to meet you, Geralt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was then that Jaskier burst out of Marcha’s shop. “Geralt! You will </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> believe the rates this elf is charging, if I were still doing tavern shows I’d need three months of just—Minnie!” His face broke into a smile like clouds moving away from the sun. He wrapped the Countess in an embrace, still chattering happily. The exchange oozed familiarity, borne from decades of acquaintanceship. He finally noticed Vesemir, and fell into a comically serious demeanor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier, I think they have news, please shut up.” Geralt muttered in his ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, because you said please…” Jaskier smirked, before focusing his attention on the pair across from them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come back to the house with us. It’s not safe to speak of this here.” Mignole said in a hushed tone, and they all hurried through campus as a group to the house Geralt had snuck into months ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They convened in the library and a servant walked in to bring refreshments. Jaskier was buzzing with anxiety by now, and Geralt laid a comforting hand between his shoulders to assuage the tension there. If Vesemir and Mignole noticed it, they didn’t comment on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m going to cut to the chase. Jaskier, your armor has been stolen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A heavy silence settled over the four of them, three sets of eyes trained on Jaskier, who was trying his best to remain neutrally-expressed. “And?” he finally asked. Apprehension rolled off of him in waves, and Geralt desperately wanted to drag him out of Oxenfurt and away from all this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well. The vault in the lower floors was robbed, and along with some other items I’ve collected, we have determined that this was an inside job, and considering your appearance now, I’m not entirely sure this was done as a petty robbery or more specifically against your interests. I don’t think they knew it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>your</span>
  </em>
  <span> armor that they were taking, but they only took things that were very specifically Witcher items, so it’s not a possibility I’m ruling out currently.” Mignole pulled out a list from her dress sleeve. “In addition to your armor, several throwing knives from the School of the Cat, almost all of the medallions I’d recovered over the years, and…” she shifted uncomfortably. “The texts containing the Viper Trial methods.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Vesemir and Geralt sat up straighter at that, meeting one another’s gaze. Jaskier buried his face in his hands. “I should have let them burn…” he muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier, if those books... if any of those items fall into the wrong hands, I don’t need to tell you how much trouble it’d cause for the entire Witcher order.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, Minnie, you don’t have to tell me that.” Jaskier stood abruptly and paced the length of the room, looking by all accounts like a caged animal. “What else do you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s going to be a rather large auction in four days, run by the Oxenfurt underground. Two nights from now, there will be a gala at a known mob leader’s house, presumably not the location of the auction, but we suspect it’s going to be a preview party for those interested in the lots being advertised.” Vesemir chimed in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The auction will be at the Borsodi Brothers House.” Mignole nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what, you just think we four can waltz in there, ask </span>
  <em>
    <span>oh yes, hello, have you seen some incredibly buzzy necklaces along with a few half-singed books and a pair of worthless pauldrons, we’d really like them back,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and walk out of there?” Jaskier bit sarcastically. Mignole laid a hand on Vesemir’s thigh, for he was looking every bit like he was about to stand and throttle the Viper where he stood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The </span>
  <em>
    <span>plan</span>
  </em>
  <span> is to send you and Geralt to the party to confirm the items are there. After confirmation, they’ll need retrieving before the night of the auction. I’m in too good of standing to go to either event, but you two would blend in, especially with how you’re looking at present.” Jaskier scowled at his own reflection in the window. “You’ll have to tell me the story.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Suppose you’re owed it.” Jaskier sighed, a defeated curve to his shoulders. “I’ll look into the robbery as well. Could I get a list of your staff and anybody else you think could have been involved?” He had reapplied the indifferent mask to his features, made more severe by his ragged appearance. Geralt tried his best not to scowl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can gather that for you.” Mignole nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d like to review the vault, they may have left some clues.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We haven’t touched it, and it won’t be touched if we leave it overnight. You’ve been traveling, and you’re injured. I’d be an ungracious host if I put you to work now.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Dinner was less tense than the discussion in the library, granted they had the option of eating rather than scowling quietly in the distance when they didn’t wish to answer a question. Jaskier counted it a win. He was grateful for Mignole’s patience with him, and how well she knew what he needed, when. When they'd finished eating and no offer of another room had been offered, Geralt followed Jaskier up to his rooms. The room at the start of all their troubles, it seemed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier winced as he removed his clothes, the dried blood from his bandages smarting like anything. Geralt retrieved a cloth and water from the ensuite washroom, and silently tended his wound, how Jaskier had done countless times before for him. “If you don’t wish to help them, we don’t have to stay.” Geralt murmured softly, matching the gentle candlelight that lit the dim room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier just shook his head. “Minnie’s family. Her collection is pretty much her children. To deny her this would be forsaking a sibling or four.” His smile was tight, grim.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure she’d understand that after everything you’ve been going through, you wouldn’t want to willingly leap back into old memories.” Geralt tried, focusing on the wound, halfway healed now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not so simple as that.” Jaskier sighed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Family never is.” Geralt finally met his eyes, seeing the hard line of sadness through his features. He brought his other hand up to gently smooth away the creases on his brow, around his lips. Jaskier leaned forward and pressed a firm kiss to Geralt’s lips, before sighing again and resting their foreheads together, eyes closed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Family never is.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The vault was exceptionally well locked. That was the first thing Geralt noticed about the small room beneath the main stairs. The door before the stairs had several heavy bolts and hinges preventing entry or damage and at the bottom of the stairs was another iron gate, one of several lines of defense between the precious items and those with ill intent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The second thing Geralt noticed was the steadily increasing vibrations coming from his medallion as they made their way down the steps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A thick iron key on a ring produced by Mignole unlocked the heavy padlock on the gate which opened to a dozen identical cabinets. Jaskier stayed at the entrance to the vault, looking around. “Who else has a key?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nobody, you know this.” Mignole huffed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Been away quite awhile.” Jaskier muttered. He finally stepped in, after taking a deep breath. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He’s steeling himself. He doesn’t want to be in here, reminded of the past like this.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt wasn’t familiar with the place and mostly followed Jaskier’s lead. The place was cleaned regularly, and whoever was in here must have been familiar with the area for the floor not to show any irregularities.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s so powerful in here?” Geralt asked, indicating his buzzing medallion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The items I collect are all enchanted with some non-interfering magic. It keeps them from...reacting with one another.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And will aid us when we need to find them.” Jaskier piped up from a corner.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Has anyone quit your service recently?” Geralt asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” Mignole said, troubled by this answer as well. “There is no time in my memory where the keys have left my side.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hmm.” Geralt went over to Jaskier, who was looking at an overturned mannequin bust which must have once held his armor. The rest of the cabinet was bare. “Anything?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My sense of smell isn’t what it used to be, but there’s nothing that smells any different in here that isn’t also throughout the rest of the house. We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you’re done being hounds, I have the list of staff and visitors from around the time we suspect the robbery happened.” Vesemir came in, laying a piece of paper on the lone table at the center of the room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When would that be?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“About two days before I arrived. We didn’t discover what had happened until the night of my arrival, which was about a week ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nine days. No wonder we can’t pick up any traces.” Jaskier huffed, looking over the list. “Who has most access to you, personally, day-to-day?”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Parsing the list turned out to be more of a task than they were ready for, so they took their discussion back to the library where they wouldn’t be disturbed. Over lunch, they theorized about possible motives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Countess is very well-liked in Redania. Unless you’ve turned rather crude over the years I’ve been away.” Jaskier teased, smiling. Geralt had missed this playful attitude.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think not, Jaskier.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well. In that case, the target was most likely not you. Just your collection. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, you don’t show or talk to just anyone about.” At the shake of her head, Jaskier sat back with a frown. “I suppose we’ll just have to start asking your staff, starting with who you trust least.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why’s that?” Geralt asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it’s someone she trusts, they’ll think they’re safer than they are if we’re going for the usual suspects.” The group nodded, they amended their suspect list, and began interviewing.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Their seventh interviewee of twenty, a young woman working for the Countess while she went through her summer university classes, left the room hastily. “Well, that was no help.” Vesemir sighed after her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hell hath no fury like a stone unturned.” Jaskier muttered, leaning back in his chair. Geralt rolled his eyes. “We should talk about the gala and the auction some more, we’re getting nowhere with pavement chasing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll send for the tailor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank the gods for that.” Jaskier moaned, and Geralt gave a soft smile. There was his bard again.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>The next day was spent in relative discomfort, from the tailor to the waiting before the gala. “You know,” Jaskier said, dressed in shimmery deep blues and blacks. “For a criminal underworld, you’d think they should know better about having an open-door gala.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The joke was, of course, that the gala was not open-door, but doors didn’t stop Witchers. They’d snuck into the grounds easily enough, and their rough appearances helped them blend in fairly well. They wove through the crowds just as easily, getting to the main house not long after entering the gates. They didn’t want to stick around long enough for anybody to recognize their faces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ushers led them to a large rotunda, where tall pedestals held items at eye-level for most. “Just look disinterested.” Jaskier reminded Geralt, wandering aimlessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can see the medallions. There’s eight.” Geralt breathed, so low nobody but a Witcher could hear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look at the people watching it.” Jaskier said. “Any of them look like they’re sweating out a fever?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not from here, no.” They continued on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you recognize anybody?” Geralt asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was a professor in </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> good standing before I faked my death, I’ll have you know.” Jaskier scoffed. “No, I do not recognize anybody.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt took a moment to absorb that. “You faked your death?” he finally asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Jaskier pulled him to the side, where it was quieter. “I taught for thirty years at Oxenfurt after I graduated, how do you think I could write the most popular song on the Continent several hours after meeting you? Jaskier isn’t my first alias, and the glamour I had when you met me wasn’t the first I’ve worn.” He spoke in a rushed, quiet voice, eyes flicking over the crowd and not meeting Geralt’s stare. “The other Kaer Morhen Witchers, Mignole, and you are the only ones who know what I actually look like.” He added.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.” Geralt said, not sure why, but guessing that the tight knot in his chest had something to do with the sad, shameful look behind Jaskier’s eyes. Jaskier looked away after a glance up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s in the past. I try not to think about it. Like everything else. C’mon. Let’s track down the books, knives, and the bloody armor and get out of here.” Geralt nodded and followed him back into the crowd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After putting sights on the texts and knives, it wasn’t long before they found the armor set.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was in typical Witcher coloring: blacks, browns, steel mail. It looked every year as old as it certainly was, falling apart at the seams, but Geralt could easily see Mignole’s care had gone into preserving it, studying it. The leather vambraces lay crossed before the set, and the pauldrons hung loosely from where the shoulders would be, atop the chest armor. Jaskier had gone very, very still at the sight of it. His eyes had a faraway look to them, the same glassy stare he had when Geralt had to wake him from his nightmares. He laid a hand on his shoulder to bring him back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt saw him regain awareness, face falling into a wistful smile. It was the saddest thing Geralt had ever seen. He wanted to make it better. “We’ll get it back, Jas.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Suppose it doesn’t fit me, anymore.” Jaskier said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He meant that more than how the armor would hang on his shoulders. It meant the armor, light and in pieces as it was, would hang too heavily on his heart and mind. Its buckles and lacings would not sit as snugly on his body. The leather, probably at one point more comfortable than his own skin, would be prickly and uncomfortable. Geralt nodded in understanding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll get it back for Mignole.” Jaskier said, before striding through the gala hall and walking away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would take none for himself.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. this riddle of revenge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The debrief after the viewing gala confirmed that both Mignole’s list of missing items and their list of suspects was shrinking into smoke. Their preliminary theories were crumbling like castles on sand, leading to all-around frustration. The auction was in two days and they were nowhere closer to finding their perpetrator than they were to understanding their motives. Geralt and Jaskier brooded in tandem.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shift focus, you two. Let’s talk about Borsodi.” Vesemir said, helpfully pulling focus from nothing at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were to go in at the start of the auction. Witcher items would most likely be saved for the end of the night and security would have most likely been heaviest at the auction stage. Geralt and Jaskier would slip in underneath the building, through the old tunnel system. </span>
  <em>
    <span>They’re not sewers, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Mignole had insisted to a distraught Jaskier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mignole had a whole set of blueprints detailing the inside of the Borsodi auction house which they used to narrow the possible locations of the collection items down to a few holding rooms. Jaskier hoped they wouldn’t get anywhere near the auction floor. The enchantments on the Witcher gear would react with their medallions on some level and unless the mob was planning on selling powerful magical items in addition to the stolen goods, they’d be able to locate their targets with some ease. After that, it was a matter of slipping out unnoticed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, of course, finding whoever had robbed them and beating them to a pulp until they gave an answer they liked. That was also important.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe we should check in on Lita. I promised I’d see her again.” Jaskier said. Before Geralt could even respond, they were out the door and sweeping across town to East Ox.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were ushered into a comfy back room by the sorceress herself, and poured tall glasses of a clear but slightly shimmering liquor that burned and froze all the way down. “I’ll be tasting that on my deathbed.” Jaskier coughed. Lita looked unperturbed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure if you can down that, you can down some Witcher potions.” Geralt pointed out. “Be of use on a hunt for once.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll have you know I’m of great use on hunts. Geralt is sorely lacking in the realm of comedic foils.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Comedic fools, more like,” Geralt muttered into his cup. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They talked over the events of the last several days. Lita had heard of the auction, but not of any magical items up for sale. “You know, the armor didn’t look too damaged. It’s cheaper to repair or add onto armor than to commission from scratch.” Geralt said, a few drinks in. Jaskier sighed in the same tone he usually sighed with when thinking about his past, eyes finding the lone window in the back room and looking out it, as if seeing backwards in time. It was a few long moments before he spoke again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Despite my best efforts, I admit I am a little attached to the old set. But seeing it again...I’m not the same Witcher I was when I wore it last.” He shook his head and Geralt remembered what he’d said a few days prior. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Suppose it doesn’t fit me anymore.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It was one of the few times Jaskier had referred to himself as a Witcher. It always made Geralt’s heart flip in his chest. He nodded, at a loss for words suddenly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your suspects. You say none of them have any ill will against the Countess.” Lita said, after several quiet minutes between the three of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, none. None of the staff, other city nobles, past staff, family, nobody. Especially nobody capable of robbing her.” Lita had heard this information several times, but she nodded and looked deeply in her drink, concentrating and thinking over the words like she’d heard them the first time. Geralt regarded her curiously, wondering where her mind was walking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about someone who held ill will to you?” she tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I’m dead.” Jaskier said automatically. “Who would hold a grudge against a long-dead professor?” It took Geralt several moments to organize his thoughts again after hearing </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m dead</span>
  </em>
  <span> fall from Jaskier’s lips, like it was obvious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Certainly you made </span>
  <em>
    <span>one</span>
  </em>
  <span> enemy while teaching.” Lita said, cocking her head to the side. “Although, I could count the students you failed on one fingerless hand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You never failed a student?” Geralt asked, amused. Jaskier reddened at the observation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s how I was raised. Anyone who wanted a place in the caravan would have one. They’d need to pull their weight, of course, but each Viper cared for, helped one another without question or complaint. At the University, I felt it was easier to just...teach how I knew to lead. Even in the larger lecture classes, I wanted them to </span>
  <em>
    <span>learn</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so my office hours never really...ended.” he spoke with the humble nature of a teacher who loved teaching, and his students. Geralt fell just that bit more in love with him. “Other professors were not so accommodating.” Lita’s expression cleared a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Other professors. You were the university’s darling even before tenure. You were essentially given any funding or position you could want.” Lita said. Jaskier started to get offended by the line of thought, but Geralt cut in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If... it was a professor that you worked with. Who would have done it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier motioned for a quill and paper, writing out and scratching through about a dozen people that came to mind until they were left with one:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Professor Arjun Sellers.” Geralt read over his shoulder. “Doesn’t sound like a man into vedyminaica.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know of him.” Lita interjected, looking over the list below. Sellers’ name had been underlined several times, obviously Jaskier had a strong feeling about him. “There was a scandal not four months ago at the University. Just after you’d left, actually. A couple of female students at the university had testified to the board of governors that he’d been making passes at them, had held their grades reliant on whether they’d sleep with him. He’d had a few rumors of the sort before, but this was six daughters of wealthy, powerful families. Who knows how many others hadn’t been so fortunate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What happened to him?” Geralt asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was stripped of his tenure and fired immediately. From what I understand, the six families made very hefty donations to the university and threatened to pull their intended donations. He’s lucky nobody leveled a sword at his throat before he disappeared.” Lita drank. The accusation seemed to be in the right direction, but...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What bad blood did you have with Sellers?” Geralt asked Jaskier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, everything under the sun. We were in several classes together when I was enrolled as a student, actually. He was a snide brat who felt entitled to anything he wanted, whether it be class rank, favoritism from teachers, and now this, it seems. We became professors at the same time, worked in the same department. I was promoted every time over him, and had better favor with university administration. You’d think once I left the university he’d be happy, but apparently not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Left the university...</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“How much time between leaving and faking your death was there?” Geralt shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, before the beloved Professor Pankrantz took a tumble off of a Skelligan transit ferry, he’d been privately training a young bard named Jaskier for about oh, four years. Figured that’d give me enough time between aliases.” He shrugged. “You really haven’t heard my Ballad To A Professor?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lita drank from the bottle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did he know you’re a Witcher?” Geralt asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Jaskier said, before Geralt had even finished speaking. “Nobody knew, that’s the thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were nearly caught in a lie several times.” Lita rolled her eyes. “All you taught about was history, biology of certain monsters, and flora only Witchers really had any need to know of.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt smirked. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, he’s definitely helping on hunts now.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Teach what you know?” Jaskier said, holding his hands up in supplication.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And not to mention most of your published songs were about Witchers long dead, they were the most boring things I’ve ever heard, but your students and the rest of Oxenfurt loved them to pieces. And after you supposedly trained a new bard, </span>
  <em>
    <span>they</span>
  </em>
  <span> go off and become more famous than you ever were, still singing about Witchers? Jaskier, really.” Lita admonished.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt tried to hold in his laughter over the sheepish look Jaskier was melting into. “And Sellers probably knew you had a patroness who had access to real Witcher artifacts.” he added, chuckling only a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stealing and selling off the goods that made you famous would most likely tarnish Mignole’s name, and therefore the name of Julian Pankrantz, posthumous ballads be damned.” Lita nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And he’s exactly the kind of bastard that would hold a grudge against a dead man.” Jaskier pointed out. “People’ve held worse for less, I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve seen </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> hold worse for less.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I liked that doublet and you knew it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They all paused, in thought once more. “That doesn’t answer—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who robbed the vault. I would’ve caught Sellers’ name on Minnie’s list the moment I saw it, but as far as I know none of the faculty had stopped by.” Jaskier finished. Nobody had anything else to say, for they didn’t have Mignole’s suspect list, and they were too drunk to remember it anyhow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A bell jingled at the front and quick steps walked around the desk toward the back. A young girl with a hat covering her head poked her head in. “Lita, the armor is ready for you.” she said, sparing a glance at Jaskier and Geralt for a moment before dancing away, like she’d never been there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What armor?” Jaskier asked, head lolling back to look at Lita.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your armor. You wanted it priority, and Marcha can only do so much by himself.” she explained. “You two go home and report to Mignole, see how viable the Sellers theory is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They made their goodbyes, and the Witchers stumbled back to Mignole’s, bumping shoulders every so often. Geralt gave up trying to steady Jaskier over and over, and instead slung his arm around Jaskier’s shoulders, keeping him on the same pace and path as himself. Jaskier’s warmth pressed against his side sent rather pleasing feelings down his spine. Jaskier pushed his face into Geralt’s neck, the rest of the liquor hitting him hard. “Y’smell good.” Jaskier slurred, voice muffled by Geralt’s neck. “Hair’s soft.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt was most certainly </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> blushing at the affection and attention, but he did let out an annoyed huff at being climbed on like a tree. He pressed a kiss to Jaskier’s crown, hair nearly black in the stark moonlight. They eventually made it back up to Jaskier’s room, both of them laughing and whispering like drunks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sleep was good, and the company was better.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>In the morning, they took their breakfast in Jaskier’s chambers, heavy curtains drawn shut to keep out the cursed light. A package had been set down with the food, which they didn’t notice until after they’d finished eating. It was heavy, wrapped in thick canvas, and lumpy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Armor?” Geralt asked around a mouth full of bread and eggs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Prolly armor.” Jaskier agreed, untying the knots binding the canvas covering closed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a large pile Jaskier had unceremoniously dumped atop the bed, Geralt could hardly tell it was an armor set at all. The faint scent of magic lingered on it however, and Geralt remembered Lita whisking away to go enchant it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“D’you need—?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, probably. I know you can do this with both eyes tied behind your back, but...” Jaskier winced as he nodded. They got him into the armor after a quick wash in the ensuite.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt pulled back the curtain over the desk to look at him better. The sharp beam of light cut across the dark room and for a moment, Geralt saw Jaskier’s eyes flash an unearthly blue, the animal effect of their Witcher eyes. He appraised the man before him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The one thought Geralt could make out among the buzzing beehive of his mind was that it suits Jaskier very well. The leather pieces were all made of a deep blue leather, the color of the sky around a new moon, the lands illuminated by stars alone. And just like stars, tiny notches throughout his jacket peeked out. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jaskier and his knives.</span>
  </em>
  <span> With the sheath belt around his hips, Jaskier slid his fangs into place with a satisfying </span>
  <em>
    <span>sssnick.</span>
  </em>
  <span> A longer sword sheath hung at his back, for Geralt had insisted he carry a longer weapon at least while on the road. Beneath the molded chest armor, a maille stomach piece covered his vital organs, the steel a dark gray, shineless. His waist was cinched just so that it stole Geralt’s breath to look at it for too long. Beneath the chest piece, Jaskier’s favorite gray tunic sat against his skin, unfastened as usual and with the delicate frills and embroidery poking out the top. The trousers he wore were of a deeper brown leather, similar in construction to Geralt’s but still appealing to the eye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked, in every sense, a Witcher.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt didn’t know why he was surprised Jaskier could ruin his suave illusion with just his mouth, but the last few months of competency had lulled him into a false hope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not entirely finished, I think Marcha is holding the rest hostage, but...well? Are you just going to stare or say something? Oh, I forgot, you don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> reviews.” Jaskier smirked, arms held out in a flourish as he turned, letting Geralt inspect him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wide, warm hands came to rest on his waist, and lips at his ear. “If it were up to me we’d take it off and have you do a </span>
  <em>
    <span>different</span>
  </em>
  <span> kind of performance.” Geralt breathed, hands shifting up to pull Jaskier’s body back against his. Jaskier felt heat flood through his veins, making him feel like he was drowning, forever and ever, in Geralt’s hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another knock at the door broke them apart quickly. A steward came to take away their breakfast tray, only gawking at Jaskier for a few moments. “Well. We should go check in with Vesemir and Minnie.” Jaskier said, suddenly jumpy and nervous. Geralt followed him out, still unbelievably turned on and unable to take his eyes off Jaskier in Witcher armor, fresh from the smith. Even the smell of magic was exciting him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They found the pair in the library, both instantly ceasing conversation to gawk at Jaskier. Geralt noticed how his hair—his </span>
  <em>
    <span>natural</span>
  </em>
  <span> hair—really complemented the coloring of the whole set. He gave the appearance of an autumn evening incarnate: quick to sneak up, but incredibly, inescapably dark when he struck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Vesemir broke the silence with a low whistle. “Sure you can fight in all that finery?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve fought in worse.” Jaskier grinned. “Please hold your opinions until the entire set is complete, there’s a few more pieces still in work. A sword, some bracers, a damned sword.” They sat together around the table they’d been theorizing at for the last three days. The three others tuned Jaskier’s excited rambling out easily enough. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How did talking with Lita go last night?” Mignole asked, hands folded politely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We...actually think we may have found our culprit. Or at least, the one behind it all.” Geralt said, eyes sliding to Jaskier to explain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Arjun Sellers.” Jaskier nodded. “He was fired a few months ago for lewd conduct with some university students.” They explained the rest of the story, and presented their theory to Vesemir and Mignole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mignole spoke first. “Do you remember seeing him at the gala night?” Geralt shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There were no familiar faces.” Jaskier sighed. “It’ll mean he’s at the auction tonight. If he sees me, he’ll probably flee with the artifacts he stole.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How did he get them, though? He’s never been to the mansion before.” Mignole said, frowning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We thought about that. If he was soliciting well-off students, it means he was soliciting lower class students, as well. Those without protection of a family name or power.” The implications of the length of his true list of victims he preyed on made a shiver run through the room. “We interviewed a student. Working here, for the summer.” Jaskier said, eyes alight with the realization.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Carina.” Mignole said, a dark cloud passing over her face. “She was helping with my affairs, balancing books and managing staff. She...she knew what was in the vault. Exactly what and where.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t kick yourself for this, Minnie. You couldn’t have known.” Jaskier said, soothingly. “We’ll make sure Sellers doesn’t use her anymore. Or anyone else.” Jaskier pressed a kiss to her knuckles, the surety of a son comforting his mother. Geralt met Vesemir‘s eyes. He had a strangely proud expression on his face, like the feeling surprised even him. Geralt gave a small nod to the man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They quickly laid out theories based on this new information. Their plans changed a little, with the addition of drawing Carina to their cause in order to capture Sellers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, the cards did not draw in their favor. Breaking into the seemingly-solid stronghold was a lot more difficult than they’d expected. After traversing the city underneath the streets, each drain they were meant to push through ended up being securely shut.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well now what?” Jaskier hissed. “Did we crawl through the sewer for nothing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a sewer.” Geralt muttered, thinking. They moved through the tunnel where they knew they’d still be inside the Borsodi courtyard and managed to breach the surface. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt then pulled out a long rope with a tri-directional hook attached to the end. As soon as two of the hooked edges latched on to the edge of a window four levels above, Jaskier followed up behind Geralt, easy as ever. The burning of the rope between his fingers faded away from a surging rush of adrenaline and mission-focused power.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A wooden grate, painted to look like the steel which guarded the lower floors, crumbled obediently in the onslaught of Igni Geralt levied against it. Past the window, they wove as one through the corridors, two eyes at front, two at his back as they wove through the confusing weave of walls and paths beneath them. “Any sign?” Jaskier breathed, looking about them for any indications of a trap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“None so far. Holding room two.” Geralt breathed. They whispered their way through the walls, hugging the edges and barely making a sound as they crept toward their goal. Geralt and Jaskier both halted simultaneously, the faintest vibration ringing through enchanted steel. “Right direction.” Geralt murmured.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They could hear the sounds of the auction a floor below, raucous laughter and cheers for won bids. When they came upon holding room two, they halted around the corner. Two guards stood watch at the door, hands on pommels, alert. Jaskier looked around at the floor, and silently picked up a few small cobbles that had come loose from the stones. With his tongue poked between his lips, he tossed the stone toward the guards, hitting one right on the forehead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The guard let out a surprised shout, head whipping back and forth to try and discern the direction the rock had come from. Geralt stood tense, ready to fight. Jaskier readied another rock. When both guards were looking away, he threw it underhand to skitter across the floor in front of them, drawing them away from the door to investigate the tiny rock. The moment both their backs were turned, Jaskier stepped out from behind their cover, and raised his hands palms-forward and descending as he spoke the spell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somne.” he whispered, and the guards both keeled forward, right onto their faces. He checked to make sure they were unconscious, and called Geralt out from behind the cover. Geralt had that </span>
  <em>
    <span>I-can’t-believe-you-still-use-that-sign </span>
  </em>
  <span>look on his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We could have just fought them.” Geralt muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you no imagination? Besides, these halls echo.” Jaskier lifted the keys from a guard and unlocked the holding room door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every wall was lined with wooden crates and packing straw was strewn all over the floor. It was impossible to discern where Mignole’s stolen goods were by sight alone. “Alright, show me the way.” Jaskier slipped all of his enchanted rings onto one hand, and waved it slowly over the crates.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he reached a smaller one, shoddily made and different in craft from the rest of the items, his hand nearly shook with the force of the enchantment of the items within. He pried open the top, pushing aside hay until he found the set of medallions. Cat. Gryphon. Wolf. Manticore. Jaskier handed them to Geralt, who tucked them away in a pouch. The search continued.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the Viper Trials texts and the Cat throwing knives were located, all that was left was the armor. Geralt had so many enchanted items on him that his medallion was jumping off of his chest, so Jaskier told him to stand at the door while he tracked down the last item.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or at least, tried to track down the last item.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a frustrated snarl, Jaskier admitted the worst. “It’s not here. It’s probably down at the stage already.” Geralt nodded and they walked out of the room, willing to risk the danger to complete their task.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They walked right into a young woman Jaskier instantly recognized. “Carina, I presume? Care to steal anything else from others?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her surprise at being caught morphed into palpable mortification. “I didn’t want to!” she blurted, tears welling in her eyes. Geralt, surprisingly, swept in as she turned frantic. “He made me do it, he’ll—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re not here to hurt you. We know what Sellers was doing. Take us to the armor and Sellers, and we’ll let you go.” Geralt said. She nodded, still frightened, but swept away with the Witchers at her heels.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She led them to the holding room just off of the stage, and turned back to them. “I’m working as an auctioneer assistant, they’ll let me get it. Just stay back here.” she whispered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was several tense minutes before she returned, a large bag over her shoulder. Jaskier’s rings buzzed once again, and he had to calm his racing heart. So close to the armor now, he felt wave after wave of emotion hit him. Geralt accepted the bag, and Jaskier was grateful. He didn’t think his arms could move to take it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sellers. Where is he.” Geralt said, straight to the point. She looked reluctant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He will tell my family what he’s been doing to me.” She wrung her hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We won’t let him talk, trust us.” Jaskier said with a cool smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nodded. “I’ll bring him to you. Go to the courtyard.” Carina swept away once more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should we trust her?” Geralt said after a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We asked her to trust us. Besides, she looked as eager to rid her life of him as we do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And we’re just going to...walk out the front door like we didn’t just steal several lots of the auction.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. Let’s go.” They did as Carina said and waited in a dark shadowy corner of the courtyard outside. When she emerged, an irate man stalking behind her, Jaskier nodded to Geralt in confirmation that it was Sellers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go. You take left.” They descended on the man, and Jaskier knocked him out with Somne. They dragged him out of the courtyard by his arms, sending a grateful nod to Carina before they left.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>“Wake up.” Geralt said, splashing water on the disgraced professor’s face. He sputtered awake with a gasp, shaking his head free of water and unconsciousness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who are you? Let me go! Do you know who I am?” he shouted, indignant and whiny.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We know exactly who you are, and what you’ve done. Tell me, how long did it take you to stop preying on the wealthy students and move to the less fortunate?” Jaskier sneered at the man. If Sellers recognized his old teaching nemesis, he didn’t show it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have no idea what you’re talking about, you stupid oaf.” Jaskier rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “Noble women love me.” Sellers added, and as soon as he’d finished speaking, the silence roared between them. His confident smirk faltered, and Jaskier struck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, since you like feminine nobility, maybe you’ll talk to…” Jaskier motioned, and Mignole stepped from behind the iron wall. Vesemir’s eyes glowed in the dim light of the vault. Recognition and horror dawned on Sellers’ face. “A good friend of Carina’s.” Jaskier concluded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C-Countess.” he stuttered, shifting in his binds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know you organized the robbery. I know you manipulated Carina. You have one chance to explain yourself.” Mignole spoke with the same clear tone of steel slashing through the air. Her words hung heavy over the man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-It’s not what you think! I promise! It was a joke, a joke.” The man squirmed under the four sets of eyes focused on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, in that case…” muttered Geralt, into Jaskier’s ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What use did you have with my collection? You’re not a Witcher scholar. You were never interested in Witcher lore when you taught.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speak, dog!” Vesemir snapped from his corner.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wanted to get the last laugh on Pankrantz!” Sellers blurted, voice gone up an octave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An uneasy shift passed through the room, and the others glanced to Jaskier, who only looked confused, wary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pankrantz is dead.” Jaskier said, slowly. The eyes returned to the man bound to the chair. “You wanted to get the one-up on a dead man?” Sellers laughed and looked down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He lives on in his legendary way. Always took the spotlight. They still sing his songs, his </span>
  <em>
    <span>ballad</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and reference his papers and treatises on history and art, when I’m right here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They do, do they?” Jaskier said, a delighted smile crossing his features. “How painful that must be for you. Painful enough to break into a noblewoman’s house—no, because you’re too cowardly to do the work yourself, aren’t you, Arjun? You manipulated a helpless woman, a student who trusted you, to break into that noblewoman’s house because you couldn’t handle having the entire city of Oxenfurt knowing you were the worst alumnus to haunt the University’s halls? So much so that you went as far as to steal several pieces of the living history that made that professor famous. Had to step on the very sex who had already crushed you underfoot. Like a diseased cockroach.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man looked bewildered at being caught out, leaning back as far as he could in his chair. “I don’t. How come he got a patron and not me? If it were me here I’d be writing Witcher songs and living in annoying tunes stuck in everybody’s fucking head!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It suddenly became very apparent to everyone but Sellers that this whole thing was a cosmic joke, and...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jas, I don’t think he gets it.” Geralt muttered, trying to hold in his laughter. Vesemir barked a laugh, once. Mignole held mirth in her eyes, but her cool expression did not flinch once. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Clearly, he doesn’t get it. I think I’ll laugh about this on my deathbed.” Jaskier smirked. “Well. Countess, he’s confessed to the crimes, I think our work is done here. If what Carina has told us is anything to go by, I don’t recommend letting him leave here alive. Or in one piece.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Both. Both is good.” Geralt shrugged. “C’mon. It’s late. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Julian.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The Witchers ascended the stairs without a look back, and shut the door to the staircase just as the shouting started back up again in earnest.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Two Witchers walked over the bridge leading out of Oxenfurt, returning to the wild road ahead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was quite a bit of fun, what do you think?” Jaskier asked, mounting his new horse with a rather dramatic flourish of his side cape. Deep blue and black, it safely concealed the two sheathed shortswords at his side. His new glamour bounced against his chest, a small, flat disc attached to a silver chain around his neck. The scars on his face and neck had faded away, but his hair and eyes still showed his wilder nature. His sword at his back all but disappeared behind the lute case.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fun isn’t the word I’d use.” Geralt smirked. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from seeing Jaskier all armored up like this. It lit a wildfire in his heart which spread through each vein at every heartbeat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think you know how to have fun.” Jaskier teased, easing his horse into a faster trot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt frowned at his back. “I can have fun.” he protested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fun isn’t just wiping the floor with someone else at Gwent, Geralt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it’s fun! Gwent is fun, I’m good at Gwent, so I know what having fun is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Semantics.” Jaskier waved him off with a gloved hand. “Race you to the next mile post?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If that ugly horse can hold its own against Roach in a race, I’ll be surprised.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Beauty is in the mouth of the gift horse, Geralt. But I’ll take surprised. On your marks, Witcher.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. one chance to put this at an end</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>They rode leisurely along the Pontar, away from the coast. Jaskier chattered amiably atop his horse, which he had named Pegasus for some reason. It was strange for Geralt to see Jaskier so differently each day. Every hour they spent in conversation was an hour he’d have the rug pulled from under him, unearthing some bit of information so incredibly antithetical to his idea of Jaskier.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why do you mount creatures to kill them?” Geralt asked one evening, just them, a fire, and the stars above.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure it will come as no surprise that it’s how I’ve always done it.” Jaskier smirked. “Wolves may all have to adapt to the same fighting style, but Vipers kind of...let you go, find who you are, how you fight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We do not all fight the same.” Geralt retorted, rolling his eyes. “You have me at a disadvantage, I can’t compare you to your own order.” The reminder of how utterly alone Jaskier was, the last Viper Witcher on the Continent, sent a chill through the campsite. “I’m sorry.” Geralt murmured, watching Jaskier roll onto his back on his bedroll.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s fine. But really, I suppose I was unfair. I cannot judge the whole of Kaer Morhen on one Witcher alone, as you cannot judge a caravan of forty-eight on the one who survived.” He played with a small spark that had drifted close from the fire. It danced along his fingertips, wove between his knuckles like Geralt could do with a coin. “But you asked why I mount creatures.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a flash, Jaskier was suddenly sat astride Geralt’s hips. The tiny flame was gone, but his fingertips still burnt like embers as he traced over a small scar that carved a jagged path along Geralt’s shoulder. “It’s because it’s more fun.” he whispered, before leaning down and kissing Geralt back against his own bedroll, pressing the whole of his weight against the other Witcher.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt took the out from the previous conversation with grace. His hand came up to cup the back of Jaskier’s neck, the other snaking to hold his waist. Free of the armor there, he felt no qualms about winding his fingers into the already-wrinkled fabric of his grey chemise. Their breaths came in hot pants as they ground against one another, desperate for contact and touch. Geralt let out a low groan and let both hands fall to Jaskier’s gyrating hips, gripping them tight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier…” he whispered, pulling him back. “I want…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes?” Jaskier breathed, pulling back and looking down at the Witcher beneath him, holding on by just a thread of control.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want this. I just. I want to treat you. Right.” Geralt gritted out, closing his eyes against the lustful look in Jaskier’s own. “Not out here, in a nameless forest on the hard ground.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve had worse.” Jaskier whined in protest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to be on the ‘worse’ end of your scale of conquests.” Geralt grumbled, sitting up so he could more easily put distance between their hips. “I want it to be good, for the both of us.” He stroked his hand across Jaskier’s face, still flushed with blood and excitement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier rested his forehead against Geralt’s, and breathed in deeply to try and calm his mind. “Okay. Anything you want.” Jaskier said. He pressed a sweet kiss to Geralt’s nose, and pulled back. “Just gonna, can you just hold me for awhile, then?” For as free with his body as he normally was, Jaskier sounded rather shy about asking for affection and kindness from the other man. Geralt simply nodded and twined his arms around Jaskier’s body, holding him close as he’d liked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Out of curiosity, however.” Jaskier started, voice muffled into Geralt’s shoulder. “What are the requirements for ‘treating me right’?” Geralt huffed a laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, a large bed, for one. Somewhere with clean water. Food. Ale. A quiet town, perhaps.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Comfort, then.” Jaskier smiled. “Pity we didn’t come to this realization in Rinbe, when we had all of that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But not each other.” Geralt admitted, a downward turn to his lips. He petted Jaskier’s hair gently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well. Maybe we should stop back in Rinbe. See if Yennefer of Vengerburg is still holding the town hostage.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At this, Geralt stiffened just a little. Jaskier pulled back to look at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t leave on murderous terms with a sorceress, did you?” he asked, using humor to hide his more nervous mood. “One memory that comes to mind was of her holding a rather sharp implement to some of my favorite body parts, I’ll have you know. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of a magical being. I’ve already got Lita to worry about.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt shook his head. “It’s not that. We left on fair terms. Nothing to suggest I’m at all more interested in her than you, it’s just…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As much of a relief as that is, she’s not the kind to let slip what she wants, you know.” Jaskier toyed with the ends of Geralt’s hair, letting it slip between his fingers in a nervous, fidgety way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve rebuffed more persistent advances than hers.” Geralt burred, and his eyes drifted away. He didn’t want to admit his mistake. “I made a wish I deeply regret, I believe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, well, killing me is something I’m sure was—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier. You already know I regret doing that to you. It’s...something else.” He shook his head, chest feeling tight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey. You can trust me…” Jaskier said, making him look up at him. “Whatever has been done, I’m sure we can make it better.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wished...my last wish from the djinn was to tie my fate with Yennefer’s.” Geralt admitted aloud. “I knew she was going to try something else to get...whatever it was she wanted. I thought it best that I keep an eye on her from time to time, so she doesn’t, so she doesn’t burn the Continent down, or something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tie your fate…” Jaskier whispered, trying to comprehend. “If...does she know?” From the lack of a hasty response, and the uneasy shift in Geralt’s body language, she didn’t. “Geralt, you need to tell her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” Geralt said, bitterly. “It’s not as if we’ve run into her yet. It hasn’t affected us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, having a djinn’s magic surrounding your actual destinies can put both of you in danger! She’s a spark in a dry forest, you admit yourself. You’re constantly on the trail behind dangerous monsters and murderous humans alike. To mix your two destinies together will only spell trouble for anyone peripheral to your lives.” Jaskier tried not to seem selfish about his concerns, but he remembered the sharp, cloying power that swirled around Yennefer as she was performing her ritual. “Get your foot out of your ass and </span>
  <em>
    <span>tell her,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and at least she’ll know she isn’t only looking out for herself anymore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think she’ll honestly give a damn about another person, especially one that cursed her fate?” Jaskier’s heart gave a sharp pang that Geralt thought his company was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>curse.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not a curse, Geralt. You’re an honest delight to be around, even with all the blood, guts, and grunting. You’re a loyal friend, you care deeply about your family, and strangers alike. It’s why you made that wish. It’s just...not fair for you to have done that, interfered in her life without her consent like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt swallowed roughly, pushing Jaskier off his lap. He’d been denying all of these revelations and thoughts for months, occupied with only Jaskier, his needs and wants. For Jaskier himself to bring this up was an inescapable conversation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’ll probably kill me, in all honesty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have me to protect you, now.” Jaskier smirked, only a little hurt from being pushed off of Geralt’s rather lovely lap. Geralt rolled his eyes and suggested they get some rest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After Jaskier had gone to sleep, easier now from their years on the road, Geralt stayed awake, looking into the dying fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer had not known of Geralt’s true affections for Jaskier when they parted. Geralt had not even known himself, and now, with the prospect of seeing the mage soon on the horizon, he felt uncertainty churn in his gut, the way it did when coming upon more beasts than he’d initially bargained for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did, however, know in his heart that Yennefer would surely interfere, or at the very least </span>
  <em>
    <span>complicate</span>
  </em>
  <span> how things were going with Jaskier. Their relationship was still budding, vulnerable, and Yennefer paid no mind to those kinds of things when she was on a rampage. He would have to be very careful on how he worded things with her when the time came.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the moment, though, he simply pulled Jaskier closer, and went to sleep.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Without a clear path in mind, they traveled through the Continent as they would have regularly: Geralt choosing contracts, Jaskier playing in taverns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The only difference (among the many, many differences) Geralt really struggled to accept was when Jaskier readily accompanied him on his hunts. All the places Jaskier was fluid and adaptable, Geralt was hardened, sharp points. More than once, he’d huffed “this is why I work alone” to his companion, who, more than once, laughed at the outburst.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seeing Jaskier mow down drowners and ghouls he’d normally run screaming from in the past was enough to shock him still at times. Jaskier had no qualms with running headfirst into danger, but Geralt took issue, especially when it resulted in another scar on his body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Like the gryphon. The fucking gryphon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the first contract Jaskier had taken under his own name, Geralt hiding out somewhere in the woods with their things packed in case they were run out of town. He hadn’t been run out of a town in years, even then they were very small towns who had been swindled by less noble Witchers in the past. As it was, they were in Mahakam again, and while the town they were staying in wasn’t as quiet and strange as Silent Pass Village, it was…quirky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The town had no central point to it, at least not one that could be easily documented on a map. Every three years, the entire town packed up and moved elsewhere, to one of five long-fallow farming areas. They’d harvest from that earth until it was unusable, and move somewhere else to let the land heal itself. “They’re kind of like nomads. I like it.” Jaskier observed to Geralt as they’d set up camp nearby.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The town’s current settlement was under attack by a gryphon, who hadn’t got the message that forty humans would be farming rather intensely where it’d come to roost. A lovely problem to walk into.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier had managed to track down the nest to a craggy cliff, which, along with tall pines, provided lots of cover for a family of gryphons. Geralt was impressed by his knowledge of the creatures, and almost patted himself on the back for teaching it to him. However, with a sour expression, Geralt realized that his “teachings” to Jaskier over the last seventeen years had most likely just been a review of sorts. “Don’t ride the gryphon, Jaskier.” he muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier had Geralt draw the creature out of the nest while he climbed the cliff. Watching him ascend, all kitted up, was a very proud moment. He thought seeing Jaskier capable and confident would have been rife with pointed-out mistakes, but they were no more mistakes that Geralt would have made. Jaskier gave the signal. Any closer to the nest, the gryphon would have caught his scent on the updraft.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt sent a blast of Aard through the trees, making as much noise as possible. One of the farmers had even lent him a pitchfork, to add to the illusion that Geralt was another farmer trying his luck in the land. With a deafening screech, the gryphon leaped from its nest, abandoning the fledglings to attack the interloper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier swung himself over the side of the nest, slaying the beasts there and lighting it with Igni. The sounds of Geralt locked in battle with the gryphon below filtered up on the wind, and Jaskier looked for a quick way down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A stupid, silly idea came to him. He pulled his fingers into his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. Even from far, far below, he could see the gryphon whip its head round, taking in the burning nest and the scent of burned flesh and feathers. The berserk cry it let out pierced the sky, and it ascended into the air with intent to maim.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier do NOT climb on that gryphon!” Geralt roared from below.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not climbing, I’m jumping!” Jaskier laughed, before taking a running start and hurling himself off the side of the cliff.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt’s heart lodged itself in his throat as he saw Jaskier make contact with the gryphon, who, in its ascension, had not been prepared for an aerial attack. Jaskier had both his fangs out, and was ready when the gryphon got close enough, lodging themselves deep in the wing joints. The gryphon faltered, wings flapping around wildly. Geralt didn’t see it, but he heard Jaskier cry out as the beast snapped its beak closed around his shoulder. The two tumbled to the ground below, the gryphon bearing the whole of the impact on its back. Jaskier rolled off, leaving his fangs behind. Geralt sprinted over as fast as he could, but Jaskier was faster, drawing his new sword from his back and slashing at the beast’s neck before it could recover from the fall. It was finally dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier favored one arm as he recovered his weapons, and blinked up at Geralt after he’d fallen to his knees. Geralt scooped him up. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen a Witcher do.” he said, hands fluttering as he checked Jaskier over for more wounds besides his arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“At least I didn’t let it </span>
  <em>
    <span>eat</span>
  </em>
  <span> me.” Jaskier laughed, weakly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah yes, the bare minimum, not letting it kill you. Bravo.” Geralt snarked, moving to stand before stilling at Jaskier’s soft noise of protest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just give me a minute, haven’t felt this much adrenaline in awhile.” He closed his eyes and leaned into Geralt’s chest, holding on weakly with one hand. Geralt let himself be held, supporting Jaskier’s weight. He pushed the hair out of Jaskier’s face and pressed his lips to his forehead. Jaskier hummed happily, hand tightening in Geralt’s shirt. “We can do more of that later. Let’s get our coin.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After returning with the beast’s head, Jaskier had berated the farmers on the  drawbacks of long-fallow harvests, and had even written down a list of instructions on how best to choose their fields and crops to support their small population, </span>
  <em>
    <span>away</span>
  </em>
  <span> from magical beasts. Geralt had stood silently during this tirade, shocked and amused, and had to drag Jaskier away before he said anything that would have jeopardised their reward.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They rode until they found an inn, and there Jaskier began to gloat over his victorious hunt. “I’d like to point out exactly how far the tables have fallen from the tree, Geralt.” Jaskier crowed as Geralt treated and bandaged the bite on his arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As you truly love to do.” Geralt growled, fastening the bandage with more force than usual. Guilt, sharp and toxic, sat in his gut as if he’d swallowed rocks. Seeing Jaskier hurt was something he didn’t think he’d ever feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>used to. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“I told you not to leap on its back. Twice.”</span>
</p><p><span>“Don’t pour another knife in the wound, Geralt.” Jaskier moaned. As Jaskier had been arguing the merits of playing with an injured arm—imagine the </span><em><span>sympathy coin, </span></em><span>Geralt—he was interrupted when Geralt tensed and looked up sharply at the door. They walked down the stairs to the main tavern connected to the inn, and saw what—</span><em><span>who—</span></em><span>had</span> <span>captured Geralt’s attention.</span></p><p>
  <span>Yennefer of Vengerberg sat by herself in a corner of the tavern, exceptionally free of other patrons. Whether this was her own unapproachable personality or the effect of some distancing charm, Jaskier did not know. Geralt had a rather constipated look on his face. “Retrieve tongue from cat. Go tell her you need to talk.” Jaskier urged, pushing him forward with his uninjured shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt wouldn’t go by himself, so it was the two of them who approached the amused sorceress a moment later. The unwelcome feeling was radiating off of her in waves. Still, Jaskier didn’t know if it was magic or just her natural self. “Yennefer.” Jaskier spoke first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier.” she smiled, cold as ice. “Geralt.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yennefer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence fell between them, greetings as unwelcome as their presences. “I thought I’d see you again, didn’t know it’d only take eight months.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, well.” Jaskier cut in. “We wanted to talk to you about that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yennefer hid her confusion with an unreadable mask. Oh, yes. Keeping this bond between her and Geralt would have definitely made things worse all around. “You two are more...friendly.” she commented. “That’s new. The eyes and scars, also new.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your magic or the djinn’s seemed to break the glamour.” Jaskier said, knowing full well it was the djinn, but flattery was as much a reflex as blinking to him. “May we speak somewhere more private? We have a room here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt gave no indication to his feelings on the matter, which was just perfect.</span>
</p><p><span>Yennefer stood, surprising them both. “If you’re going to try and kill me, make it </span> <span>quick so I can leave.”</span></p><p>
  <span>“Not in a hundred years. Maybe after that, we’ll see.” Jaskier took her hand and led her to the stairs, a dozen pairs of eyes, and Geralt, following after them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now, Yennefer. First I would like to say that if we’re dead, that won’t be best. So please try and restrain yourself until after Geralt apologizes.” Jaskier said, sitting equidistance between the two.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt was essentially holding his breath before he blurted out what he’d done, the wish, his intentions, all of it. Yennefer sat there properly, still as stone, until he finished speaking with a stumbled-through apology.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier turned to her. “So yes, please don’t kill us because well, we like our lives.” He gave a nervous smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As furious as I am with you, I am wise enough to admit I was perhaps a bit...over the line with the ritual concerning the djinn.” She shrugged, as if that was enough of an apology for threatening Jaskier with the business end of a ritual knife.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A beat passed between the three. Geralt looked like a man ready to ascend the steps to the gallows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“However, I don’t wish to keep this bind over my fate, and there’s only one logical way to undo a djinn’s wish.” she spoke at last.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier’s stomach sank as Geralt answered her riddle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“With another djinn.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a scant moment where everything hushed silent over the three of them, before Jaskier started shouting, protesting in earnest. “No, no no no no, no. I don’t think so. I’ve already been nearly killed by one wayward wish, that is </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> happening—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m in.” Geralt muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh for heaven’s bloody sake. I knew this would come back to haunt me in the ass.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They set out to hunt a djinn. Jaskier had really nothing better to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so, he followed.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. we could be perfect one last night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>sorry</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Hunting a djinn was not as glamorous as Yennefer or Jaskier initially thought. Geralt, being the only one of the three to successfully track one down, took the lead, which brought them very far north to the Kestrel mountains. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Snow stuck to their boots as they exited the portal. Their horses stayed at the base of the mountain, but Yennefer had offered to make their trip that much quicker. In any case, the mountain range was far north enough that dragons still roamed the peaks and caves, and they didn’t want to be caught so few in number for long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier shook himself as he walked out of the portal, the tingling sensation still making his blood itch. Geralt looked slightly green, but was still on his feet. Yennefer, predictably, was unaffected. The wind whipped at them from all sides, and they couldn’t communicate until they found a small cave to duck inside of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re sure there’s a djinn on this mountain?” Yennefer shouted over the roaring gusts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes! If you dropped us where I showed you on the map, we should be right by it!” Geralt yelled back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well let’s bloody hope so!” Jaskier said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The djinn was apparently bound to a very well-hidden piece of moonstone, which made searching for it among the granite and limestone impossible during the day. Vast outcroppings of rock which were dull at best in the daylight shed no more interest in moonlight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the sun began to rise on the second day, ending that night’s search, they made camp in a dark cave, away from the biting wind and harsh light while they rested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What would you wish for, really?” Jaskier asked the stalactites.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bard, do you stop speaking? At all?” Yennefer groaned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a bard. But I’m serious. What would you wish for. No wishy washy all-the-power-in-the-world crap you keep trying to convince us of.” Jaskier looked over at her. Her amethyst eyes sparkled, but it was some time before she spoke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...had a choice ripped from me, before.” She said. “I didn’t realize it was gone until it was too late. I want it back. There’s a power to at least be able to say no to yourself.” Her bitter smile spoke volumes in a language only understood by her. Jaskier nodded politely and did not press her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about you, Geralt? Any secret desires I should know about?” He leered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re ridiculous.” Geralt muttered. “I just want to undo the mistake I made.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somehow I resent that.” Yennefer quipped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well that’s one wish, Geralt. A djinn gives you three. What are the others?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt also did not answer for a while. Jaskier realized quickly that he and Yennefer were not the kind of people often given chances to ask what they wanted most. It sent a pang through his heart, and he stayed quiet, eager to hear Geralt’s wish.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...suppose a better life.” He shrugged. “It’s stupid. I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Witchers don’t often get anywhere near a good life. It’s a just wish.” Yennefer said, polite. Jaskier gave a smile. “What about you, Jaskier?” It was the first time she’d used his name, instead of </span>
  <em>
    <span>bard. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He faltered. “Oh. Well. Hm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You mentioned someone named Valdo Marx.” Geralt teased.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“While yes, I loathe the man, I think the last eight months have really given me a different perspective on things.” Jaskier said slowly, feeling out each word for any detection of a falsehood. He found none. “I think I’m happy just how I am. Isn’t that why we make wishes? To be happy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or to right wrongs.” Yennefer said. Geralt grunted in assent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Happiness is a bit too far of a grasp for cynics, I forgot.” Jaskier rolled his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s rest. We resume at sundown.” Geralt said, and they all rested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier was still trying to work out what would please him more than what he already had. He had adventure, excitement, budding romance with his best friend, coin, a family again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He really was content.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>“We’ve been out here for days. How are we supposed to find a djinn looking for rocks on a freezing mountaintop?” Yennefer groaned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Patience is a virtue best served cold.” Jaskier said, sagely from where he was observing the difference between two identical rocks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Has he always been like this?” Yennefer asked Geralt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think it’s just his true personality coming out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rude!” Jaskier called. Geralt forgot he had hyperaware hearing these days. Had always had it, probably. It made his gut twist uncomfortably to think of all the stupid, mean things Jaskier had probably heard him say under his breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier interrupted their searching on the third night. “Ahem, not to be presumptuous, but…” he held up a rock. “Is this moonstone?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It indeed gleamed and shimmered under the full moon, vibrant purples and blues and pinks and golds radiating out from his palm. Yennefer and Geralt approached. “My rings are going crazy right now.” Jaskier breathed. Even Geralt nodded, seeing his medallion shake a little bit. Yennefer passed a hand over it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is what we’re looking for. Here.” She produced a thick velvet bag. “Drop it in here. We don’t want to awaken the djinn before we have a plan.” Jaskier gingerly dripped the enchanted rock into the bag, and she tied it off to her waist belt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“To base camp, then?” Geralt suggested, waving his hand in a circle to indicate Yennefer should open a portal down for them. She rolled her eyes and back they went.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>They should have known things were going to go to shit as soon as they got back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright. So, the djinn,” Jaskier tossed the velvet pouch between his hands. “Is quite the exploiter of loopholes. We,” he gave another toss. “Have come up with some very specific and detailed wishes that the djinn couldn’t possibly twist on our heads. Aside from the fact I don’t think this plan will work… Why aren’t we just doing a one and done, then? Reverse the wish Geralt made in Rinbe and we release it, back on our merry way?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d set up in a tavern not far from their base camp, a private room paid for with Yennefer’s coin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because we all want something, Jaskier. We need to strike while the iron’s hot.” Yennefer sighed, scribbling notes on a parchment. Geralt glowered from where he leaned in the corner. “Geralt doesn’t get a say, he already proved he can’t handle wish fulfillment.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt grumbled and rolled his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The only reason we went looking for a djinn was to undo the one thing a djinn could undo. Why tempt fate further?” Jaskier pointed out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I never got what I sought in Rinbe, bard, and I won’t let another chance leave me.” Yennefer snapped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a bard.” Jaskier corrected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A </span>
  <em>
    <span>Witcher</span>
  </em>
  <span> would know the use of a djinn.” Yennefer said airily, making Jaskier’s skin prickle. “So you’re back to useless bard status now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s right. It’s too rare a chance to let go.” Geralt said. “Don’t you—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier, pissed at being left on his own side, interrupted him. “I prefer working for what I want. Worked out pretty great for me so far. Besides, I honestly have no use for a possibly exploitable bit of magic; I don’t want any part of your wish-divvying.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier tossed the bag to the bed, and suddenly, a great black cloud, thick and heavy with magic, swirled around the ceiling of the room, taking a dozen loose small objects with it. “Oh good lord.” Jaskier muttered, backing up and taking his sword out. “Hope your edits are done, Yennefer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Check your arms!” Geralt shouted over the swirling wind. “The djinn’s sigil should be there if you have the wishes!” He and Yennefer checked their arms all over, but there was no confirmation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bollocks.” Jaskier muttered, tearing back his shirt and revealing a swirling shape. “Fuck! It’s on me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Read the wishes!” Yennefer said, thrusting the page at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier read off the page, as quickly and loudly as possible, but the storm did not cease. “Why isn’t it working?!” Geralt shouted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because they’re not </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> wishes! They’re yours!” Jaskier blurted out, letting the paper fly away from him in the biting wind. “I wish…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tension rose in the room, almost suffocating the three of them. Jaskier spoke so quickly he hardly remembered speaking at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I wish the bond Geralt made to Yennefer was dissolved.” Jaskier finished, locking eyes with Geralt. The other pair shuddered as the magic snapped between them once, twice, and then for good. Geralt paled, throwing a hand up to his chest and gripping a wall for support. It was the most surprised Jaskier had ever seen him, and he looked stricken with whatever the djinn must have done. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish...to give Yennefer the choice she had taken from her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sorceress fell to the ground, clutching her middle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wish for your release, djinn!” Jaskier shouted to the black cloud above them. An ear-splitting shriek ripped through the room. The moonstone in the bag turned to dust. The wind stopped, leaving nothing but the sound of the ringing in their ears and their labored breaths. Geralt re-lit the candles with a snap of Igni. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yennefer.” Jaskier went to his knees next to the mage. “Yennefer are you-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My body has been restored to me.” She was smiling, a genuine smile with tears in her eyes. “I have my choice back.” She laughed. “Thank you, Jaskier. Thank you.” Jaskier smiled easily back at her, but the smile dropped when he looked at Geralt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The White Wolf of Rivia looked absolutely murderous. He was past angry, past furious, past any mood Jaskier could have talked him down from. “Geralt.” Jaskier whispered, uneasy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You…” his voice grated like small rocks at the beginning of an avalanche. Jaskier knew there was little point in trying to stop him. Yennefer extricated herself from the floor and left the room, like she was never there. Jaskier almost wished she’d stayed, dreading being alone with Geralt’s focused anger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt smashed his fist in the wall, leaving it splintered and broken. “You didn’t follow the plan, Jaskier!” He shouted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The plan didn’t work, if you hadn’t noticed!” Jaskier said, getting to his feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You knew we weren’t going to let it go! Why did you release it!” He seethed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know as well as I do that a captured djinn is ten times as dangerous as a freed one.” Jaskier retorted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But it's still dangerous! The most dangerous creature is the one you pity!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, did Vesemir tell you that?” Jaskier sneered. “Maybe I did pity the djinn. Maybe I understand it just a little. You know, being trapped by the nature of what everyone </span>
  <em>
    <span>thinks </span>
  </em>
  <span>you are? Only being valued or desired when it’s most useful to others? I thought you wanted this, you wanted the bond cut with you and Yennefer!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did! And it felt like pure agony! That’s not the point, Jaskier. You could have wished for anything, </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything </span>
  </em>
  <span>to make our lives better and you let the djinn go!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I let the djinn go because that was the best thing to do! It was the right thing to do!” Jaskier gestured helplessly. “Why slaughter one being for the cruelty of another?” Jaskier tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Another?! If we’re putting fault on things, it should be on </span>
  <em>
    <span>you,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jaskier!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The silence in the room boomed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Jaskier asked in a small voice, heart pounding with apprehension.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you hadn’t interfered with the djinn in the first place we wouldn’t be stuck in this mess. I wouldn’t have had to write all those damned books for you—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geralt,” Jaskier pleaded. “No-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“In fact, I wouldn’t have a damned Child Surprise if you hadn’t dragged me to Cintra a decade ago.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop, that’s not fair.” Jaskier felt himself trembling, unable to stand seeing the full force of Geralt’s anger and hatred turned on him like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you hadn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>lied</span>
  </em>
  <span> to me for over seventeen years about what you are, I wouldn’t have even bothered.” Geralt spat, and Jaskier felt a few tears shake loose of his eyes. “Not even who you are. You don’t know who you are. You’re not a bard, you’re not even a Witcher. You are hardly the same person day to day! You’re constantly making yourself who everyone else wants to see, and I can’t keep loving someone so intangible, as consistent as smoke.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geralt.” Jaskier begged. “You don’t mean that, please.” He took a step forward but Geralt dodged, stepping away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Get out of my sight. Don’t follow me. Don’t...just don’t, Jaskier. Listen for once. You and djinns fuck with my fate too much already. Goodbye.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he was gone.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Jaskier numbly packed his belongings but didn’t really remember or understand why he was doing it. He vaguely noticed he was still crying, but managed to hastily exit before anyone could look at him too long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He left his horse at the stable and walked. He didn’t stop for food or rest, and when he collapsed in exhaustion, he felt the hard dirt was more than he deserved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sky was turgid with rain, and he wanted nothing else but to let the storm swallow him whole. He closed his eyes and leaned against a rock, letting the cold air pressure flood his senses.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hello, Witcher.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier rose suddenly, head whipping from side to side as he looked for the source of the voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You won’t find me with your eyes, Witcher…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier took a seat back again. Maybe losing Geralt was hitting him harder than he initially thought, losing his fucking mind like this. He held his head in his hands and tried his best not to think about the hateful look on Geralt’s face as he’d cast him aside. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Witcher.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier’s eyes shot open as he detected the presence before him. A humanoid figure, wispy and fluid, floated before him, two glowing orange eyes in the blob which was probably its head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you?” Jaskier said, tilting his head. “Are you going to kill me?” The thing mirrored him, tilting its head as well.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why would I kill the one that just freed me?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the djinn, the one from just hours before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you want? Haven’t you caused enough troubles?” Jaskier said bitterly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A cool laugh, then. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Humans make enough trouble for themselves, Witchers doubly so. I want to thank you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank me? For what, doing the right thing? Or the wrong thing, apparently.” he muttered. Why was he even talking to it? He must be going mad, truly.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, for freeing me. You used three wishes you rightly earned on others, not for yourself. You could have had your family back, you could have had riches, you could have had your enemies obliterated. But you didn’t, why?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t owe you answers, djinn.” he scowled, looking at his hands. He’d been picking at his nails again, and they throbbed a little. “I just wanted us all to have a better life. Thought things were going alright, really. My life now is...well it’s as much as I deserve, to be honest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The djinn was quiet for a moment, considering this. It nudged his hand a little, making him look up.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What we are dealt, what we deserve, and what we desire are three separate things in this life, Witcher.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stop calling me that! I have a name!” Jaskier panicked, pacing around the small clearing, trying to find his head again.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You have a name, but your title is who you are, isn’t it?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well maybe I don’t want to be that anymore. Not after...not after my only reason just waltzed out of my life like I was a rabid beast who’d bit him.” He pulled at his hair, before dropping his hands and facing the djinn with some finality. “I wish I was never a Witcher.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so, he wasn’t.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>IT GETS WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER :D</p><p>Also, HOLY SHIT! The wonderful <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarsInMyDamnEyes/pseuds/StarsInMyDamnEyes">StarsInMyDamnEyes</a> made this <a href="https://stars-in-my-damn-eyes.tumblr.com/post/617867060322713600/witcherjaskiers-anyone-id-say-something-about">AMAZING lineup of Witcher Jaskiers</a> (Witchers Jaskier??) and the one for this fic is the fifth one! I'm cryin y'all. Thank you so much for this, it really made my day even before I got out of bed. If you're artistically inclined I welcome all interpretations and fanart &lt;3 thank you so much!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. trade me for an apparition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He watches the strange caravan wind its way out of Kerack. Being an orphan, there’s nothing better to do with his time. He doesn’t even have a name. He had seen children in the caravan, loving mothers. A family. But he watches them leave all the same, and it starts to rain. He goes back into the empty house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first few years of his life after his parents die are rough. He’s constantly hungry, begging for scraps and picking through rotten food until he’s old enough to hold a pitchfork and muck out stalls. He thinks about the strange caravan from time to time, the strangest and most interesting thing to happen in Kerack for a very long time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s not a lot to do in Kerack. Where he lives and works is pretty out of the way of where travelers frequent, and due to his low status he doesn’t bother trying to court or marry anybody. He doesn’t deny he thinks of a kind touch, a warm body by his late at night when it’s so cold he can’t think.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He mucks stalls. He sweeps floors. He even repairs leaky roofs. It’s on top of one of them where he sees a woman running across the tops of houses, crouched low and so light on her feet that he can’t hear her steps, even as she leaps over a gap between buildings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s almost an illusion, but he wipes his eyes and keeps watching her until she disappears from sight. He knows a few words to describe her to others, but not enough to matter. He never learned his words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He apparently never learned sense, either, and finds himself trying to do the same thing the woman had, walking along center beams and weaving between bare thatch. He’s almost good at it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Until he leaps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fall is terrifying, the most exhilarating thing he’d ever done coming crashing down on top of him. A leg crumples beneath him like straw, and the trio of loud snaps makes him scream in horror before the pain even hits. And when the pain hits…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It never goes away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He walks again. Barely. He is nearly destitute on the streets, a painful limp on a leg and hip never healed right. He can’t muck stalls very fast anymore. He can’t sweep because he needs to lean on the wall. He can’t climb a ladder to a roof again because that leg just doesn’t bend anymore. He’s in a splint for forty years of his life, and cannot walk without it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The caravan comes back. He knows now that they are Witchers. They are nasty folk, mutants, and he feels he should hate them but they don’t seem to have anything visibly wrong with them. Not like him, his leg bent at strange angles, a horror that children point and laugh at, that men and women toss pitiful coins to without him asking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Witchers don’t look at him with pity. They welcome him to a night of dinner. He wants to tell them that he remembers, remembers seeing him, but words fail him as badly as his legs once had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He meets the gaze of one woman with sharp green eyes, and he’s back on a rooftop forty years ago, wondering what it feels like to fly before feeling what it’s like to fall. He cannot speak to her. She must know his shame, everyone else in Kerack does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One of them has a strange wooden thing in his hands. It’s a lute, they say. They play what they call a chord and the harmony of it plucks at some place in his chest that he doesn’t have words to describe. He feels as strummed as those strings. He is utterly silent while the Witcher plays. That night when he goes back to his little hovel, he cries himself to sleep, but cannot erase the ache that music has left in his body. The Witchers do not offer to take him along again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knows he’s going to die without someone that loves him, without having loved another. He knew that he was destined to be alone when his parents died. He knew that when girls wouldn’t talk to him, when boys wouldn’t play, that something is wrong with him. Nobody wants an orphan hanging around. Later, a stablehand. A tavernkeeper. A roofer. A cripple. A sad, unschooled, unskilled, practically mute cripple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The surety of his fate increases after his injury. All of Kerack seems to parade by his sickbed to see the unnatural angles of his body. He feels an urge to show off, look what I can do! Some turn green. Children cry. It’s not what he wants and he feels horrible shame.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He spends his days with his eyes cast to the ground. It’s so easy to trip on things with a bum leg. He does not admire the skies, nature, the sea, or people around him. It’s just him and the ground and the pain as he walks the streets of Kerack. He can tell you the subtle differences in the color of the dirt on the path from his hovel to the stables. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every night he wishes he would die. It’s worse in the storms, which happen so often on the coast but he cannot leave. The gathering clouds always bring with them a bone-deep ache in his body. He’s heard elders speak of this pain but he is not an elder. He is just a broken hermit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And worst of all is this: the loneliness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would call it </span>
  <em>
    <span>crippling</span>
  </em>
  <span> loneliness were he more poetic, but he’s not and he knew better than most what crippling actually means, and feels like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And this loneliness is so. Much. Worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does, eventually, die. Every human does, even the legends and heroes. He feels like neither. His name never even grows past “boy” or “you there”. There would be nothing written on his grave. Would anyone even dig him one? He is too much a coward to hurl himself from the cliffs of Kerack, though it almost happens several times, when his mind is darkest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dies in the winter. Without another to look out for him, the fire goes out, as he sleeps several feet away. He does not wake, not as the winds howl and snow pushes its way into the badly-built hovel. A badly-built hovel for a badly-built man. The difference between them is that the hovel at least has a name, an address which nobody writes to, but an address all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His broken, frozen corpse is not found for weeks, and only then when the smell starts to upset the sheep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nobody buries him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They instead set the hovel aflame.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Jaskier was crying when he was pulled from the vision, the feeling of culling ice and pyre flames still engulfing his skin. The djinn had a sad look to its misty appearance, a downward turn to the glowing orange eyes. He still felt the crushing loneliness and sorrow in his chest, ripping his ribs open like lava flowed from the earth. He fell forward and almost heaved out his last meal. The djinn remained.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have seen many men make foolish wishes. While Bound, I could not keep them from their fates. My brethren have often turned spiteful, twisting desires into nightmares. However, I have the power to keep you from your mistake.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why?” Jaskier begged. “Why not just let me die?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Your soul has always been bound by a strong Destiny. This was not your path.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t have a path.” Jaskier protested, laying his body out in the dirt again. “I’ve always just tagged along and let people push and pull me where to go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If you have lost your way, it’s best to start at the beginning. This is all I will say. Farewell.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>In a soft pop, the djinn dissipated into thin air.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Jaskier stayed on the dirt even as it began to rain. It reminded him of so many years ago when he was hauled onto a horse by a Witcher named Janna. Janna had brilliant green eyes and walked as silent as the wind. Jaskier had loved her the moment she held him and declared he’d be going on an adventure with them. He shook the thought away and sat up. The djinn had not returned in the hour he’d been moping on the ground, so he drew himself up to his feet and righted his sword and pack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. The beginning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so, he went.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Short chapter but with finals over, I may start posting once-a-day! Suppose you'll see tomorrow...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. we spark and fade</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Kerack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier stood at the gates to the city with a steely glare in his eyes. The source of all his pain, where he was born. He forcibly took one step forward, and convinced himself to take another after that, then another, and another, until he was standing in front of a small hovel near the outskirts. It was mostly made of mud, which meant it dripped when the weather got too humid or when it rained. For now, though, it was dry. Nobody seemed to live inside it, and Jaskier remembered the feeling of slowly freezing to death, as if in a dream, another memory not his own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rubbed his hand over his hip, phantom aches of a different life, unlived.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He walked around town for hours, trying fruitlessly to understand what the djinn had meant by </span>
  <em>
    <span>going back to the beginning.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps it had meant for him to return to the last place he was really human.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll need a lot more alcohol to make myself remember that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The mind was a fickle thing to try and best, though. The memories came, painful and unbidden.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hello,” a voice said. He turned around, nearly tripping over his little feet. He looked up and up and up at the woman, dressed all in black and in trousers. She had sharp, brilliant eyes that looked like a cat’s.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Don’t talk to ‘im, ‘e’s an orphan.” another child’s voice, Kelley as the boy knew him, sneered derisively from behind a fence some distance away. The boy snuffled. He didn’t know what that meant, but he knew the word meant </span>
  </em>
  <span>him</span>
  <em>
    <span> better than his own name.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m certainly not going to talk to a little brat like you,” the woman snapped at Kelley behind the fence. She softened again, as soft as she could get, then knelt to the ground. “Do you have someone watching you? Where’s your family?” she asked gently.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The boy leaned over, picked up a handful of soil, and pointed into his dirty palm. “In here,” the boy said. The woman’s features scrunched a bit before nodding.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you want to come with me? We can get you cleaned up and fed.” The boy nodded eagerly, and let the dirt fall from his hand as he took hers.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>He found a scrappy little tavern. A hundred years ago, it was a barn with ill-repaired roofs and a formidable army of chickens running in and out like they ran the place. Fitting, that it was now called the Ruled Roost. He walked in after double-checking his glamour was in place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He must have looked like a right mess, covered in mud and dirt and dust and sweat from trekking through all of Redania, some of Temeria, and Cedaris just to get to the last place on the Continent he wanted to be. A large part of him had died that day fifty years ago, and he felt the presence of ghosts even now. For now, though, the only eyes on him were the half-dozen in the tavern who had seen him walk in. He remembered Kerack being less hostile, more curious to outsiders than they were currently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t want no trouble. Nothin but death for Witchers here,” an old man slurred from a stool. Jaskier said nothing, feeling righteous indignation flare up that someone would say that to Ger—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No. They were saying that to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Witcher’s coin’s good as another.” The man behind the bar said. “Come take a sit.” Jaskier had said nothing, but sat as directed. “We haven’t seen a Witcher in so long, these parts. Especially not one with eyes like yours.” He said, meaning clear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m the last with these beauties.” Jaskier said, taking the proffered ale from the man. “You’ll only get golden eyes these days.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t heard no trouble in town.” The man said after some time. Jaskier realized he was being asked about his business in Kerack. The rabble in the tavern had not resumed just yet, all eyes still on Jaskier’s hunched frame. He understood the slouched form Geralt would take when walking into places like this. The eyes carried the weight of stones.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not planning to drag any here.” Jaskier sighed. “Just visiting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They let him be, drinking steadily and alone at the bar.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>His first night with the Vipers was full of raucous joy, dancing, songs sung over a fire. The first song he learned to sing was around that fire. He couldn’t wrap his little lips around the words as well as the others, but he tried, and for that, they loved him, they fed him, and they cared for him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He never left their sides.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When the caravan packed up, he sat in front of Janna on her horse, told to hold on with both hands. He’d never been up so high before in his life. She told him stories of great adventure, monsters they slay to keep humans safe, beautiful princesses and silly lords. He laughed and hung on every word. She was the greatest storyteller he’d ever meet in his life.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She answered all of his questions, pointing out rocks and birds and trees and plants alike to him, teaching him how the world moved to make the days and nights. There were several other children with him, who all shared their time and attention. He felt warm even on the coldest nights of his short life, huddled up with Janna under a blanket.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The first time he saw the Vipers fighting, he was scared. He remembered one of his few memories of the five years he had, the shouting and hitting and blood that happened before he became lonely. Janna held him while he cried, stroked his hair and called him her “little Dandelion”.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Sometimes we need to practice before we can go fight the monsters,” she explained, her green cat-eyes steady and serious. “It might look like we’re trying to hurt each other, but we’re protecting each other when we spar.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Protecting each other?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“The blade is an attacking weapon,” she said, holding her silver sword before him, rotating it to show its thin, sharp profile. He felt that if he looked at it too long, his eyes would bleed. “But it is also defensive.” She rotated it again, showing off the flat edge, nicked with scars like the ones he’d seen on the other Vipers. “Witchers are the same. We attack monsters so that we can defend those who cannot.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Even me?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Even you, my little Dandelion.”</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Another ale.” Jaskier rasped, setting down his mug. “No, something stronger. The strongest you have.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Strike! Up! Up! Elbows in! Watch your feet! Good!” Janna coached from a log nearby. He was sweating through his tunic, and the practice sword had splinters in its handle, but he grit his teeth and worked through it. He huffed and brought his arm down in a swift arc, elbow tucked in. His opponent, an older girl named Taya, moved to block him, and he adjusted, dropping the blade into his waiting hand below and bringing the tip up to point at Taya’s neck. Her eyes gleamed with the thrill of the fight, and her snarl turned into a grin as she yielded.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re getting faster every day, Dan.” Taya panted.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I have to impress the ladies.” he stood back, holding his practice weapons to his sides. Taya rolled her eyes, as did Janna.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re cute, but not that cute.” Janna quipped.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m sure being a Witcher would make me sexier.” Dandelion followed her out of the training area they’d set up, near the caravan. At her silence, he continued. “Janna, I’m almost sixteen, when can I begin the Trials?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her earlier light mood had dropped significantly. “You do not know what you ask for,” she insisted, for the hundredth time. “The only one who can make that decision is Hanara.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes, well, you’re married to Hanara, why won’t you put in a good word for me?” Janna stopped and turned to her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Usually spouses speak on more interesting topics than overeager children who want to grow up too fast.” Her eyes had a sad tilt to them, green moss on a grave. It sent a wave of guilt through Dandelion, who swallowed and had to look away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I just want to contribute to the hamsa. Like you.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She sighed. They’d had this conversation before: same lines, different settings. “You already contribute as much as anyone else. Enjoy your life, Dandelion. Don’t waste it on a life you think you want.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“But I </span>
  </em>
  <span>do</span>
  <em>
    <span> want this life!” he blurted. “I want to be like you, like Mikal, like Hanara and every other Witcher here. I don’t.” His voice choked up. “I don’t want to keep being left behind when I know I could’ve been out there, helping. More swords is less scars.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’ll cease your studies if you undergo the Trials.” she warned.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“A good Witcher never stops learning.” he pointed out, using her own wisdom against her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“And a good Viper knows how to be patient.”</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Yeah, just give me the whole bottle. I’ll drain another tavern tomorrow, don’t worry.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>They were in Flaming Jealousy, because there were always necrophage nests cropping up there and it was easy coin in the winter. Most of the caravan was taking refuge in a small cave they’d found in the woods, but not them.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hanara and Janna had led Dandelion into the woods, a mile from the cave.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We have...discussed what you wish.” Janna began, the most uneasy he’d ever seen her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He sucked in a breath. “I can do the Trials?” he asked in a whisper. Janna closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her wife, the leader of the Vipers, spoke.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You can make the Choice. You have been training dutifully, as focused in physical training as your academics. I have to say that I’m impressed, considering how we found you.” His pride swelled and took a hit within seconds of one another. Hanara was never one to let ego go unchecked among Vipers. He took the praise with a nod. “It will be a very difficult, painful experience. It is never without risk, which you must know going in.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He nodded again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Once you survive the Choice, you will go through the Trials, and if you live past them, you will live under a stricter creed than the one you have now.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I understand.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“This is a decision that may only be made once, Dandelion.” Hanara said in her grave voice. He never understood how such a fierce woman could tolerate someone as opposite her as Janna. Their love, however, was evident. “You may die. Painfully.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Janna looked at him with a mask of inexpression. He already knew she did not want this fate for him. He steeled his jaw.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I...when can I start?”</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Stupid. Stupid fucking fifteen year old boy. A child. Janna was right. You were right!” Jaskier called to the skies, drinking the schnapps from the bottle. “Not like it’ll bring you back.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Choice, while it was the most disgusting three months of his life, was easy enough to adapt to after a while. He missed eating the regular food from the caravan, but he always had another Viper Witcher there to bitch to as he choked down herb-wrapped mushrooms and foul-smelling mosses. His body became leaner, baby fat sluicing off him like snow under the sun.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>On top of the horrible diet was the endless physical training, followed by scant hours of sleep whenever he could get it. He’d be woken before dawn to run miles and miles, and was not permitted to ride a horse or in the cart with the other humans when the caravan moved. Meditation was hard to concentrate on, with how tired and hungry he was, all the time. He ended up just sleeping, knelt on the hard dirt.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Janna made herself scarce around him, because, she told him years later, “I would have been slipping you cuts of meat and fruit every time I saw you.” He appreciated her distance, then. It would not have allowed him to survive the Grasses as well as he did.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Gods, the Grasses…” Jaskier moaned, finally good and drunk as he roamed Kerack.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>His body was well-used to accepting things it really shouldn’t have. Poison was poison, however.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The mage who looked over him while he lay on the forest floor had perfected his mask of indifference, though he was surprised at Dandelion’s health following the Choice. “You should be in worse shape.” he said, casually. “I wouldn’t say it’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>not </span>
  <em>
    <span>a good sign, but…” he gave a shrug.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Let’s pick up this conversation later.” Dandelion said, teeth chattering with nerves. Hanara watched from a short distance away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Speargrass. This will slow your heart. Do not panic, breathe how you think is normal.” There was a pressure at the vein in his arm, and the effects were almost instantaneous, a great weight over his lungs and chest. He gasped wetly, body shaking and writhing as it fought the decoction. The Mage cast a spell over his body, and he stilled, though still wildly panicked.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Wildrye.” the mage said next, and the pressure was there once more, though he barely felt it now. “This will enhance and overwhelm your senses. It will burn. Brace.” A scant moment later, pure misery burned through Dandelion’s veins, and he screamed, back arched off the floor as his body flooded with sensation, every inch of him aflame. The mage’s spell held his body back to the ground, and paralyzed him. Years later, when Taya went through the same Trials, he would understand that it was so he would not hurt himself seizing wildly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>As soon as he stabilized some, the mage spoke again. “Mother’s Tears.” he sighed. “Shame really. I really liked those pretty hazels.”</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Hazels.” Jaskier breathed, looking at his sapphire cat-eyes in the reflection of his sword. His hands shook. “Pretty hazels.” He drank some more.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Grasses continued for ten days, stuffing him full of so many rounds of decoctions that he felt he’d bleed potions instead of blood by the end. Endless vomiting and sickness, delirium and hallucinations, magic forces calming and stabilizing him, faces come to peer at him at all hours, their features distorted with concern and sadness.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>At dawn after the final round of potions had settled in his system, he sat up in an empty clearing. There was no sign of anybody else around him. Was this another hallucination? He had to hope it was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The alternative was that he had been left behind. He had caused too much trouble in the hamsa, and the Vipers had left him behind. The panic made his heart race, which.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Thump. Silence. Seemingly endless silence. Thump.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His heart had slowed down incredibly, so much that he forgot to even breathe. The feeling was so intense and loud to him that he scrambled backwards, toward the less-exposed treeline. He looked around, which.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He could see every blade of grass around him in perfect detail, every leaf on every tree. Details he never knew were there stood out in stark relief. How had he never noticed the world looked like this? He looked down at his hands, inspecting every pore and bump in his skin with intense clarity. The amount of stimulation in his eyes triggered a migraine, which.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Explosions from behind his eyes, in his stomach, even his </span>
  </em>
  <span>blood</span>
  <em>
    <span> seemed to ache at the feeling. He fell to the floor, curled in on himself. He tried to stabilize his breathing, but nothing was making sense about his body anymore. Suddenly, he sensed someone nearby. How did he know that?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He could hear the same thump. Silence. Thump.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was Janna. She stood at the treeline, some fifteen feet away. He could hear her heart as clear as if he was inside of her ribs. He had not known how beautiful she was until now, and he didn’t blame Hanara for letting her stony exterior crumble to her beauty.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Dandelion.” She said. “Do you know who I am?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He gave a nod, wincing when his migraine worsened at the feeling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“The Trial of the Grasses is finished,” she whispered. “I am here to administer the Trial of the Mountains.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He tensed. Was it any worse than the last? She could sense his apprehension.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m going to ask you some questions. It’s important to answer honestly, because the Trial of the Mountains is an exam, of sorts.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No decoctions?” he rasped. His voice was shredded from screaming.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No decoctions, elixirs, potions, herbs, or mushrooms.” she assured, before taking a seat in the grass closer to him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He was nervous once more, Janna knew him better than anybody and he wouldn’t be able to lie to her. Perhaps this was why she was selected to administer this Trial.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you alright?” she asked, first. He almost answered reflexively, but she told him to be honest, and honestly…</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No.” he whispered gravelly. “Everything hurts.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She nodded. “Do you remember the day before the Trial of the Grasses?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I...maybe.” he shook his head.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What did you do that day?” she asked, more specifically.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I woke up, had to run with Jordan, ate, um. I threw up a bit. I was nervous. Mikal sang a song. I listened for as long as I could before I had to eat again. I met the mage.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What did you think about before you went to sleep?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I thought...I daydreamed, really.” he whispered. “I daydreamed about standing on the edge of a cliff, in Kerack. My toes were over the side, and the wind was still. I could only fall over if I wanted to.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Did you fall over?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Not then.” he shook his head.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“When did you fall over the side of the cliff?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I thought about it again just before the Trial started. There was really no turning back after that.” She nodded, and was silent for a moment.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do you remember the first beast you ever saw?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“A warg attacked the camp while we were on the road.” he answered automatically. “Its eyes were red, so dark it was almost black.” He knew he would be able to see every speck of red and every shade of every color had he faced it now, but his memories were still fuzzy, more so than before. “Hanara slayed it. You held onto me, kept me behind you.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She nodded, remembering as well.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The questions were not what he expected. He was expecting to be quizzed on bestiary studies, fighting techniques and alchemy. These were all questions, he realized, that tested his memory of his own life.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“How many rounds of Grasses were given to you, Dandelion?” Janna asked, more serious than before.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Three a day for four days, then four a day for four days, then six a day for two days.” he answered. “I...I remember each one.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The memories alone were torture of their own kind. Janna let him sit and remember them. This was the purpose of the Trial of the Mountains. He was not meant to forget the pain he endured for his kind.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The pain of a Witcher.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Fuck remembering. Fuck memories, fuck the Mountains, fuck...Janna, why?” he moaned, climbing a large hill, hand coming to rub at his jaw. The wind whipped at his face, reddened further by the fading buzz of the drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He realized where he was standing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The years had not healed this land, charred and black even in the dead of night. Twisted trees seemed to writhe away from the burned-out husk of the barn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The barn from every nightmare he’s had for fifty years. He floated like a ghost through the blackened structure. His mind’s eye provided the scene as it had been: flames licking orange and white through the planks of wood, lighting dry hay as easy as oil in a lantern. He blinked and turned his face away from the memory, but now faced a different one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A large, rotted beam lay before him, and even through the tears in his eyes, he could see the black remains of a burned-out skeleton, still crushed beneath it, after half a century.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Janna.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He fell to his knees, legs giving out as he heaved for breath, as he had so many, many years ago. Panic, grief, pain, they gripped him relentlessly, tightening around his throat like a noose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He raised his eyes and his voice to the sky. “You told me to go back to the beginning. So I have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Time, it seemed, worsened some wounds.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. they die by threes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>“You can’t run, Witchers!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Jaskier snarled, digging his fingers into the singed, dead earth. His shoulders shook. He could not look away from the skeleton before him. He did not want to remember this.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>Screaming. Snarling. Cracking. Crashing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Help me!” Dandelion jumped up at the cry, finding Janna pinned under a large beam that had fallen from the barn roof. Everything was collapsing around them.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Janna, no, let me—”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No!” she coughed, struggling to pry his hands off the beam. “They’ll kill us all, Dandelion. They—” she cut off, coughing blood over her face. Her bright green eyes were rolling wildly. Janna was mad with blood loss, delirious.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m going to get this off of you, I’m going to save you, Janna!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No, there’s no time. No time. Save the texts.” She pointed a shaky finger to the trunk, and flicked her hand to open it. “Take the texts. Run. Go to Oxenfurt, find Mignole.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dandelion had no choice but to obey her order, falling to his knees in front of the trunk, stuffing as many tomes and scrolls as he could into his arms. Among the pile, he selfishly drew his journals into his grip. They weighed more than their masses.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Janna, I—” what could he say? An apology? A plea, asking for more time? When he turned, not even the flames of the barn could have thawed the blood in his veins.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Janna was dead. Her hand was still wrapped around her Viper medallion, and her eyes cast up to the skies peeking through the flaming beams and smoke.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A scream, a child’s scream, ripped him from his shock. He escaped the barn as it caved in on itself, and stood as if in a dream, books and scrolls in his hands, lungs filled with smoke. Someone approached him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Dandelion!” Hanara shouted, fangs drawn. “Where is Janna?” His heart caught in his throat as he looked to the burning wreck before them. “You get all of the texts?” she asked, voice shaking for the first time since he knew her. More screams filtered in through his dulled senses. He nodded dumbly to Hanara. “You run. Oxenfurt. Mignole. Go.” She shoved at him, pointing north, to a dark copse of trees. “Follow the Adelatte.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Hanara, I—” he was begging. He didn’t understand.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Go!” She deflected a flaming arrow with Heliotrope, sending it shooting into the dirt at Dandelion’s feet. “I love you. Remember us, Dandelion.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He ran.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Janna, I’m so sorry.” he whispered through his tears, aching pain radiating out from his chest. With shaking fingers, he gently touched the black skull before him, remembering the woman who once filled it, surrounded it. Nausea overtook him, and he retched to the side, the scent of smoke burning in his lungs, his nose, his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rose to his feet, trembling all over. With a great heave, he lifted the beam off of Janna’s skeleton. It went easily, rotted and burned out as it was. He gave a roar and blasted the cursed wood back with Aard, sending it crashing through the forest. He went to his knees again and gently laid down next to Janna on the dirt. “Guess my family’s bound to be in the dirt no matter who loves me.” he whispered painfully.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>He ripped through trees, still bleeding and throbbing with pain from the flaming arrow that had gotten lucky. He approached a dense forest, wide and tall. It'd hide him well while he recovered. As he slipped in, his medallion began to jump on his chest. “Fuck.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was all he could say before the points of three different spears rested against his neck. He hissed as one touched the fresh burn. Exhaustion made him fall back on his ass, gripping the texts with numb arms. He fell unconscious just as more figures joined the ones surrounding him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His dreams were fitful, distressing, flaming and disorienting.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When he woke, he was on a mossy boulder, and a thick, cool poultice was over his jaw and neck. He looked around as much as he could without lifting his head, and tried to sit up, slowly.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The sight of the texts nearby brought the memories crashing back into him. He stood, unsure of where he was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Vattghern,” a voice said behind him. He reached for his fangs, but they were gone. “We mean you no harm, Witcher.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Where am I?” he asked in Elder, matching the tongue of the woman before him. She was tall, dark-skinned, and adorned with beaded armor and jewelry. She carried a look in her eyes similar to Hanara’s, not to be trifled with.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You are in Brokilon.” He looked around, observing the impenetrable upper canopy, the strange light from the trees themselves. The woman was a dryad.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I mean you no harm as well, my lady.” he said, coughing roughly as he tried expelling the smoke from his lungs. Running several dozen miles in the dead of night had not done a full job of it, it seemed. He kept a hand on his chest, wheezing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You were attacked. Are there more of you?” she asked, helping him to sit back on the mossy boulder he’d awoken on.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I...there were nearly fifty,” he said softly. “I don’t know of their fates. I was sent to run.” he admitted. “Protecting those,” he pointed to the books. His hand fell into his lap with a soft thud.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The dryad gave a noise of assent, nodding and checking the poultice on his face. “You were badly burned,” she observes. “You will scar, but you will survive.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Better to be gruesome than in a grave.”</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>The dryads sent him on his way out of Brokilon as soon as he was healed. He traveled mostly by night, hiding his face behind a cloak and keeping the texts in a pack the dryads provided for him. He went north on foot.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was near mid-winter when he finally stumbled through the gates of Oxenfurt. He heard news, in his travels, of the slaughter in Kerack. A group called the Salamandra. Another attack, to the East, at Kaer Morhen. He kept his hood pulled low over his face, his eyes, his fangs, as he inquired about the woman named Mignole.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He was directed to a district near the campus, which made hiding all the more difficult, with lots of curious students milling about while he stalked through the busy streets. Three heavy knocks at the address he was given, and he waited anxiously.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The door opened to a butler, who peered at his eyes for a moment before telling another servant to call for the Countess. Dandelion was led inside, into a parlor much too clean and tidy for his current situation. He stayed still as stone as he watched the butler, perched quietly at the inside of the door.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A woman swept into the room, dressed in black mourning colors. Her hair was down, but her eyes held formality and cool attention within them. “Hello.” she greeted him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I did not realize you were a Countess.” he blurted, rather stupidly. He had no need for manners, living with Witchers and all. She motioned for him to take a seat.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I am Mignole.” she said, bowing her head politely.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“D—” he cut himself off, the given name too painful now to speak.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her features softened some, and she asked the butler for some wine. “I heard about Kerack, and Kaer Morhen. Where are you coming from?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Kerack.” he rasped, the word heavy on his tongue. “I...forgive me, have you heard from anybody else there? Any survivors?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Her sad look told him all he needed to.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>Mignole allowed him to stay with her as long as he needed. He had never lived a life without others, so to be alone was rather disorienting. He spent most of his time in his rooms, brooding and sleeping better—and worse—than he ever had before. The nightmares were terrifying and never ending, leaving him bitter and irritable when he did speak with others.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He’d given her the texts, and she locked them away in a vault beneath the earth.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not a few hours after, he’d broken in and left his armor, fangs, and medallion there as well. She never spoke of it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Without the weight of his family around his shoulders, he felt listless and unmoored, drifting from the docks only to smash into them again jarringly. More than once, he found himself turning to walking the halls of Mignole’s mansion at night, restless and haunted.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One day, a few weeks after he arrived in Oxenfurt, he found Mignole at the window to the library, hand on a locket around her neck. She heard him approach, but did not turn to him as she spoke. “The day you arrived, I buried my husband.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He’d gathered as much, hearing visitors offering their condolences through the walls. He crossed his arms over his chest.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“We married too late for me to love him, and I was already enamored with another by the time I took my vows to him.” The Witcher listened quietly. “I often find myself bitter and twisted by his loss, however. For all that we weren’t lovers, he was my best friend. I hold a lot of grief in my heart, contemplating the unfairness of this world. It’s better to let it go.” She gave a smile and dropped the necklace back into her dress. “Join me, stand here.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He took the few steps forward, to where she’d been standing at the window.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The view was unremarkable, at first. It was a busy corner of Oxenfurt. There always seemed to be one person or another walking along it, even in the dark hours of the night. Now, at daybreak, a cheese merchant was setting up his outdoor stall, laughing with the pork merchant across the road.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Look out the window. Pick a person.” Mignole instructed, taking a breath and waiting until he nodded. He picked a small child, still half-asleep, helping roll out wheels of cheese as large as they were. “Love them.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He blinked a couple times, looking back at Mignole, confused. She gently tilted his face back to the window, and his eyes found the child again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The child was in a sandy-colored dress, a white apron over the front. She leaned on the cheesemonger while she spoke, and he watched the child fall asleep standing upright. Her precious face relaxed, and the cheesemonger picked her up like she weighed nothing. Her small hands came up to wrap around the man’s neck, fisting into the strap of his own apron. He was probably her father. Her hair, the color of harvest wheat, lay in tangles down her back, tied back in a messy tail. She probably had no mother to dress and dote on her, and the cheesemonger raised her alone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He found his heart clenching, but the pain that had gripped it before, the grief, was gone. Only love remained. Mignole laid a hand on his shoulder, gentle and comforting.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Only love remained.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em>
    <span>She gave him a new name. Julian Alfred Pankrantz. He could do with it as he wished, she’d said. He honestly had no idea what to do with it, looking as he did and as old as he was.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Oh, you’re smarter than that. Why not university? It’d be no trouble for me to pull some strings to get you enrolled.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He always liked learning, so he figured, why not?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When he’d agreed, Mignole had taken him across town, to a small shop in East Ox. A beautiful woman who dripped magic swept from behind a counter to kiss Mignole’s cheek, before smiling at Julian in a way he was certain he didn’t deserve. They were introduced. She was Amelita (“Call me Lita.”) and he was newly Julian. He was given a glamour, which felt like being drenched in monster guts at first, but he grew used to it by the time he left the shop with Mignole, looking like every other bright-eyed new student at Oxenfurt University.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He studied for seven years, graduating top of his class with a job offer in hand. Some days, it was easy to forget he wasn’t one of these people, that he was a Witcher with a dark and tragic past. Music let him soar above the crowds, flying on borrowed wings made of melodies.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Teaching was a different kind of freedom, loving his students as he loved the people of Oxenfurt from the library window. He amassed a small fortune from saving his coin, staying at Minnie’s mansion all those years. They grew to be close friends, family. She’d never had children, but she had named him like he was her own flesh and blood. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He had often written songs and ballads which immortalized Janna and the Vipers. He had written papers on the dangers that lurked in forests and mountains. He held lectures in grand halls packed to bursting with students and faculty alike, explaining the minute differences between herbs, and their healing properties. His studies were broad and reached far corners of the known world that nobody believed he’d actually travelled to. And that much was true; Julian Alfred Pankrantz had never been to Jealousy and monitored the necrophages there, but he had quite an insight into who else would know.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Lita helped him ‘grow’ a beard when he began teaching for too long to get away being a fresh-faced tenured professor. The suspicious speculation from his coworkers had reached a point where he could no longer explain away his spry self, bounding around halls and teaching classes at all hours. He was supposed to be a man of sixty, after all. Practically on his deathbed. The shame made him realize that he was in freefall once more, as he had been when he’d first come to Oxenfurt at mid-winter.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>His students loved him deeply, and were saddened to hear of his imminent retirement. So he made that deathbed and laid Julian down to rest. He knew playing make-believe that he was just some human would have to come to an end.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re sure about this.” Minnie had said over a glass of mulled wine. They both shared the same sweet tastes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I felt like I needed a new muse, anyway,” he shrugged, stroking his beard for probably the last time. “I’m still a lonely, scarred, secret-burdened man beneath my songs. I’m sure someone out there will love me like that. And I know you do, Minnie. I just,” he shook his head. “It’s time I left the nest, so to speak.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It was less ending a chapter and more closing the book on that life. Jaskier, as he’d so eloquently came up with, would do for another sixty years as a traveling bard. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>A new glamour on his person, he set out from Oxenfurt to go kill off Julian.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>He laughed hoarsely at the stars. Remembering took more time than he was used to, for daybreak was on the horizon. He still laid with his ghostly mother Viper, the prodigal son at her grave. He laughed and laughed until he cried and cried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe I should try Posada, that’s a beginning of its own.” he told the sky, Janna, the djinn. Nobody was listening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except, apparently, one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A gruff voice came from a few feet away. “What was?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier bolted upright from where he’d been sprawled in the dirt and ash.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Geralt.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. if you would shed your yellow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The silence between the Witchers was sharp-edged and practically tangible in the moonless night. Tension etched itself into the lines on Geralt’s forehead and tugged the corners of his mouth down into an all-too-familiar frown. Even now, after two uncertain weeks of separation, Jaskier wanted nothing more than to fall into Geralt’s arms and forget the hurt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If only it were that easy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why are you here?” Jaskier asked, setting his jaw and tossing his emotional walls up, despite the tears on his face that still hadn’t dried. He stood and took a few steps to put some distance between himself and Geralt, between himself and Janna’s remains. If Geralt wanted him away, he wouldn’t hesitate or argue the point again. Geralt was stubborn like that. Golden eyes tracked his every step, roping him in with the intensity behind them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was looking for you.” Geralt said after what should have been too long a silence. Jaskier hated the infinite patience he maintained for him. He hated how his body, his heart, gave way to the endless want for Geralt’s love, attention, even just his eyes on him. It had always been a push and pull for Geralt’s affection. How long had he actually had everything in his hands before it was slapped from them? It had only been about two weeks since the Kestrel Mountains, but it felt like years had come between them again, a hundred winters spent apart. He wished to run to him. He forced himself to hold his ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, you’ve found me. Still alive, doing a good job of doing as you wished and fucking off until now.” Jaskier spread his arms, showing off his body, still covered in a thick layer of mud and dirt from the road, and now the blackened earth from this cursed place. “What do you want, Geralt,” he snarled. “Haven’t you said enough to me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The silence banked on the wind, swooping low between them once more. It echoed with Geralt’s words back in the inn, as if he’d just said them again. Geralt flinched a little, obviously remembering as well. A sick, twisted part of Jaskier purred at seeing his own hurt reflected in Geralt’s features. The Wolf spoke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to talk with you.” he said gruffly, flexing his fingers at his side. “Not here.” He looked awkward, fidgeting like this. Jaskier remembered a man unapologetic for his own actions and mistakes, accepting the moniker of Butcher of Blaviken with a bowed head, a bloody crown staining his soul. This man here was refusing the hurt he normally would let lie, was seeking to break the cycle. This knowledge left Jaskier breathless, but only for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why not here? Too many of my own problems here for you to focus on yours?” Jaskier snapped, but breezed past him, stalking out of the burned-out barn. His anger and heartache were barely-checked and threatened to boil over at any point. He didn’t need Witcher senses to know Geralt was following him back down the hill. Jaskier scooped up the discarded bottle of schnapps he’d dropped when arriving at the place, putting it to his lips in an attempt not to block old memories from surfacing, but to prevent whatever new one was forming now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bottle was snatched out of his hand. “Hey! Give that back, I’m not drunk enough to talk to you.” Geralt hurled the bottle at a nearby tree, making it shatter in every direction. “Ooh, big scary Witcher, throwing things to make me </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared,</span>
  </em>
  <span> huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier, listen to me!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why should I? Last I checked, I was too difficult a man to love, why go through the effort, huh?” Jaskier said bitterly. Geralt took a breath to calm himself. “Is burning my things and breaking my heart not good enough for you? You come to finish me off now, Butcher?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a low blow, and Jaskier knew it, but Geralt didn’t respond violently the way he had seventeen years ago. In fact, his features softened radically, understanding and sadness warring across his face. What he’d said about being difficult to love seemed to affect him more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What I said was wrong.” he said softly, soothingly, like he’d gentle Roach after she was spooked, like he’d do when Jaskier was suffering from his nightmares. The comparison made Jaskier’s heart throb sadly. “I shouldn’t have said all those things. I should not have sent you away, I was angry and I wasn’t thinking.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I’d say you weren’t. ” Jaskier crossed his arms, unwilling to walk away when he got to witness the very infrequent event of Geralt apologizing to him. It was like watching a long tumble of a cart down a hill, utter destruction helpless to the forces acting on it. “Why did you say them, then? You knew what would happen if you did. You knew how much it would hurt me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was…” Geralt struggled for words. “I was trying to get you away, yes.” he admitted. It didn’t help the ache in Jaskier’s chest. Hearing the admission was a knife to the heart. It confirmed every nasty snarl in his mind, even in the presence of the silent ‘but’ Geralt withheld. “Please let me explain, Jas.” he whispered, like Jaskier was going to take off without hearing him out. He’d taken off for far less before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier stared unblinking, unsure of who exactly he was staring at. Geralt, for as stubborn as he was, seemed to surprise him at every turn with affection and softness where Jaskier had expected hardness and stony glares. He saw now that Geralt was exhausted, road-worn and weary like he’d been traveling incessantly, hunting for the last two weeks straight. Deep dark circles ringed his amber eyes, showing off a lack of sleep and desperate, fatigued hours of wakefulness. His hair was a mess, dirt and leaves tangled up in it like he’d just gone to war with a particularly cranky bush. It was worse than Jaskier had ever seen him, which thawed the permafrost of his hurt heart just that much more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what you’re planning on getting out of this, but.” Jaskier sighed and dropped his arms to his sides. “I’ll give you til sunrise to talk.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>Geralt did not immediately begin speaking at Jaskier’s acquiescence. Instead, they walked in silence down the hill to a quiet, sandy beach. Being some distance from the town, the fishy smell which infested most of Kerack wasn’t as intolerable here. They sat down in the cool sand, side by side. Somehow, both knew that facing one another was a step too far for what the other had to say. The sea crashed rhythmically on the shore, snapping up close and fading away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier kept his elbows on his knees, playing with his fingers the way he had almost been trained out of in his youth. The fidgeting and hyper-attentiveness was almost constant in the young Witcher he used to be, but it had mostly been trained out with education and drills. The return of such a tic was clear evidence to his distraught nature. He tried his best not to look over at Geralt, or prompt him into speaking. The silence was patient, waiting. It was a lovely thing, separate from the context. How long had Jaskier wanted just this, the silent comfort of being together? They listened to the crashing waves on the sand and winced at the first hint of humanity between them, a shift in the abiotic silence between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m angry.” Geralt said at long last, simple and true. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it that night, but Jaskier’s insides twisted uncomfortably, not knowing if Geralt was angry at </span>
  <em>
    <span>him,</span>
  </em>
  <span> or something he’d done. If Geralt still felt the same way he had when he’d cast him out of his sight, if he had truly felt that way at all, he wouldn’t have sought him out. The reminder was enough to hold onto.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt of Rivia was treated unfairly at every turn in his long life, but he was not cruel. Jaskier had spent nearly two decades trying to convince the world of this, and he knew it better than most. Hell, he probably knew </span>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt</span>
  </em>
  <span> better than most.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m angry with myself for saying those things to you. I was wrong to turn you away, and I turned you away because I...I was willing myself blind to a lot of things.” He took a deep breath, and continued. “I should not have sent you away,” he repeated. This was probably one of the longest stretches Jaskier had ever heard him speak, and to hear that uninterrupted length of baritone was a sweeter song than any Jaskier had ever sung. “I didn’t believe you when you made your wishes, but you were right. Living things should not be used just because they’re available to be used, or powerful. They should be treated with the same dignity and respect as anything else alive. I want you to know that I know that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier was speechless, stunned by Geralt’s confession.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I still don’t know why you said them in the first place.” he said after a while of breathing in the sea air, clearing his mind and fortifying himself for the answer. Geralt did not, in his experience, say things that weren’t true, but he supposed Geralt had license to lie after the collapse of the tower of falsehoods Jaskier had built.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was twice in almost as many months that Geralt had apologized to Jaskier for something he’d done to hurt him. Burning the books, lashing out with blades and anger after his secrets saw the light of day, now this. It felt like he was being led in a hundred directions. How could he keep track of Geralt’s mood shifts, when his anger snapped like the ebbing tide, when his love faded like the flow? He knew, in his heart, that he’d always forgive Geralt for his bumbles in their relationship. The Wolves were not as open with their feelings as the Vipers had been, which left Geralt rather disarmed when it came to matters of the heart. Hell, he hardly called Jaskier his friend most days, how did he expect all of that to change just because they’d kissed?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he saved his life from the djinn in Rinbe. He followed him to Oxenfurt because he was worried why he left. He had brought him to Kaer Morhen, to meet his brothers, to meet Vesemir. He reforged the precious pages of Jaskier’s past just to undo what wrongs he’d done. To say Geralt hurt him and was indifferent to that hurt was to not understand Geralt. Geralt always, always made a spot for Jaskier in his decisions, whether he had to carve it there or not. And he always, always righted his wrongs, bringing balance back to whatever scale he’d tipped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was scared.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And now, after carelessly throwing words like knives into Jaskier’s chest, he was taking them back, and patching up their love and trust again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When you broke the djinn’s bond between me and Yennefer, it…” Geralt shook his head. “It was agony. It felt like my heart was being clawed to pieces within me. A battlefield amputation. The bond had only been there for a few months, at most, and we’d only shared a few experiences and a very short amount of time together, but my life felt...colder.” He unconsciously rubbed at his chest, over his heart. “At that moment, I knew that losing you would be...exponentially worse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you pushed me away.” Jaskier whispered in realization. “So I couldn’t hurt you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I never wanted to—please, believe me.” he implored. “I thought </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> was doing what was right. You...gods, it’s like I still see you as an eighteen-year-old in Posada, I can’t. I have been </span>
  <em>
    <span>fighting</span>
  </em>
  <span> with myself to trust you how you trust me. I thought I was protecting you from that inevitability as well. I thought Witchers could not fear, but I have never felt a fear so bold and sharp as the one I have of losing you, Jaskier.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier turned his gaze out to the black ocean before them, having unthinkingly turned his eyes to Geralt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The moment you left, I knew what I did was wrong, that it was all wrong. I...I just sat in that ruined inn room and kept finding myself disoriented, without you and your things there to balance me. I kept turning over the words in my head, everything that had happened, and I felt...maybe I deserved how badly I felt, for treating you so reflexively, pushing away the only one who truly saw and cared about me.” Geralt took a shuddering breath. “And then Melitele came to me.” He said, awkwardly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She </span>
  <em>
    <span>what?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jaskier gasped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, I know, it sounds crazy. I probably sound like the most stubborn person on the Continent, needing a goddess to come and smack sense into me and get me on my way back to you.” Geralt laughed, shaking his head. The broken tension between them finally allowed the love and affection to surge in. “That was about a week ago, I’ve been searching for you ever since. I didn’t expect to find you here. Also, your horse hates me. Which made tracking a little difficult.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You brought my horse?” Jaskier said, barely holding back a smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I did. She’s the only thing you didn’t take with you when you left.” Geralt looked over, and something must have shown in Jaskier’s face, because his features and anxious expression eased somewhat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier, I want you to know you haven’t left my thoughts for even a second since...since.” Geralt didn’t know what to call it other than the Incident, but he knew Jaskier would tease him endlessly for calling it that. “I’ve spent this whole time thinking about what I wanted to say to you, but I wasn’t sure if you’d even want to listen to me when I did open my mouth again. I wrote so many stupid letters to try and have a plan, and each of them sounded more stupid than the last. Roach ate the rejects, no evidence. I just...I wanted you to know what my heart feels, what it felt. I want you to know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaskier chewed on the inside of his cheek for a bit before speaking. “When you...when you told me to leave, I walked until I collapsed on the side of the road and made a wish to the djinn I freed.” He looked at his hands, felt the ache in his hip and leg again. “I wished that I’d never been a Witcher.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You...you what?” Geralt gasped, eyes raking over every inch of Jaskier he could, looking for unhealed wounds, anything remotely </span>
  <em>
    <span>non-Witcher,</span>
  </em>
  <span> before coming to rest his gaze on his eyes, still cat-like and sapphire as they had been a moment before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The djinn was very magnanimous, don’t worry. I know it was a stupid thing to do, that I was just lashing out in hurt and desparation. It only showed me what </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>have happened if it had granted the wish. I...I would have lived a lonely, broken life. I still ended up living that lonely, broken life, but I knew love. I knew family, I knew joy and music and...and loss, hurt, shame. I knew you. And to know you is to know a better life than I feel I deserve some days.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Geralt watched him in the silence that followed, before turning to look out at the sea himself. They absorbed the impact of each other’s words. Hurt ran deep in both their souls, and they probably would never be free of it, but they weren’t trying to fix every wrong that had come to one another, just the wrong that they had the power to repair. Jaskier knew Geralt had more to say to him, and stayed quiet until he felt the courage to do so.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel...terrified. To love you as much and as deeply as I do. Witchers shouldn’t fear </span>
  <em>
    <span>or</span>
  </em>
  <span> love, and I know to fear love is...I don’t know. I don’t trust myself to make the right decisions. When I think about losing you, I know I’ll lose myself,” he scrubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I know you’ll get tired of my shit someday, Jaskier. Every mistake, every misstep in our...our relationship. I know you’ll walk away and rip my heart clean out of my chest, and I still came back to you.” Jaskier made a helpless, desperate noise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I only walked away because you told me to.” Jaskier whispered shakily. Geralt met his eyes, defeated and sad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know. I thought, in that moment, through all my fear and pain, that you would be better off just...gone from me. You’ve already gotten hurt so many times around me, because of me, and I just can’t forgive myself if I slip up again and that’s your final straw.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’d have to trust me, then.” Jaskier said, finally resting a hand on Geralt’s arm. A shiver went through the other man’s spine at the touch. He’d missed his touch as much as Jaskier had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t promise I will never hurt you, Jas. All I can do is pledge a few things to you.” Geralt shifted and pulled a piece of folded paper from his pocket. “This is what I came up with.” His shoulders shook with nerves and apprehension. “I won’t let anger take the helm when we speak,” he pledged. “I will apologize when I fuck up. I will learn to trust you, with my heart, with my safety, and my time. I will love you how you deserve, I just...I don’t know how, Jas.” The hands holding the paper fell to Geralt’s lap.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s okay, I promise.” Jaskier said, cupping Geralt’s face in his hands. “You aren’t used to loving me however you think I deserve.” Geralt’s face fell just a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m so sorry, Jaskier.” Geralt breathed. “There are no words I’ve ever said or actions I’ve ever taken in my whole life that I regret more than the ones that pushed you from me.” Geralt shuddered in his hands, eyes falling closed. His hands came up to wrap around Jaskier’s wrists, but did not pull them away. “Is there any way you can possibly forgive me? Please, tell me what you want me to do so I can deserve your forgiveness, deserve you again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ask.” Jaskier breathed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The waves even seemed to still in that moment. Warm sunlight peeked over the mountain ridges to the east, morning having come without them realizing. Geralt seemed to steel himself in Jaskier’s hands before opening his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jaskier, will you forgive me for how I acted toward you?” he whispered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I forgive you.” Jaskier leaned down, brushing their lips together in a kiss that </span>
  <em>
    <span>ached</span>
  </em>
  <span> with longing and love. Geralt cut himself off from making a soft noise at the feeling. “I forgive you.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all so much for your wonderful support and love! At this point the story is finished, with Chapter 10 being more of an epilogue than anything. I really enjoyed writing this and hearing all of your feedback, I definitely plan on writing more in this AU, and if you have any more ideas or scenarios you want to see written between these two, please hit me up on my tumblr @imnotokiedokey :) Otherwise, subscribe to the series this work is in and you'll be notified every time I post a new Witcher Jaskier work! Thank you all again! Much love. &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. trust, you said.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The morning came faster then, as if something had been keeping the sun from rising until just the right moment. Sunlight bled into every facet of the earth and for the first time in fifty years, flowers bloomed around charred earth and atop the early graves of Vipers. The sea surged happily with life, salty spray rising on the wind above clifftops where one might consider their position in life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Two Witchers walked back into town, speaking softly with one another, and sometimes slipping between alleys that hadn’t yet been lit by the sun to hold one another, to kiss until the sunlight finally touched them, warmed them like the day. They played this hide and seek until all of Kerack was bright.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was, in a word, perfect.</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>Jaskier and Geralt visited the stables, greeting their mounts with familiarity and relief. Pegasus was not pleased at her separation from Jaskier, but warmed up to him again quickly enough. He brushed her down softly, murmuring songs to her and meeting Geralt’s eyes over the low wall between them. There wasn’t a look not filled with love and affection. An unspoken need begged to be spoken.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So what now?” Jaskier asked, voice light and airy. The serious weight of the words was left hidden.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where do you want to go?” Geralt asked. “We have several months before winter and, if you’re amenable, I’d like for you to winter at Kaer Morhen with me. The Path is yours until then, if you agree.” He kept his eyes firmly on Roach, probably bracing for disappointment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I would love to go back to Kaer Morhen with you. See everyone again.” Jaskier said quickly, breathlessly. “More short-term, though, I’d prefer to get out of Kerack, into a bath, and then into bed with you. In that order.” Jaskier shrugged, barely withholding his smirk.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And after?” Geralt asked, voice lower. His amber eyes burned with intensity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We could go about how we always do.” Jaskier shrugged. “Follow the contracts, singing and slaying for our supper. You’ve never had a Witcher looking out for you before. Perhaps you could pick up an instrument. Switch things up.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hmm.” Jaskier grinned.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, come now. I think that’s a splendid idea! Cold bitter evenings in the Blue Mountains of Kaedwen, your beautiful baritone crooning how wonderful I am…” Jaskier leaned dramatically against the stall.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The day I pick up an instrument will be to immediately smash it down over your head, Jaskier.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>“So what happened with the lovely Goddesses Three?” Jaskier asked, after a meal, after a bath, and after a bed. It by all means should not have been able to hold two Witchers, yet here they were.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Geralt grunted and slung his arm over his eyes. “Three times. Three times I’ve made you come and your mouth still runs?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s the Witcher in me. I think you like having a bit of Viper in you as well.” Jaskier grinned, a cat with the canary. “Don’t change the subject, even if the subject is as dashing, wonderful, handsome as me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She...well, I’d been. No, it’s embarrassing.” Geralt shook his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come onnnn…” Jaskier needled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine!” Geralt barked. “I was...I think you’d call it brooding, mostly just in the room. Didn’t really know or care what day it was, but it must have been a week by then. Felt my head get...do you remember the stew we had in that cult town? Baragni?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You mean the mortar paste they salted and sold as stew?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That one. Well, my head felt like it was shoved full of that, fell to my knees and there she was. As much as, I suppose, a goddess can be </span>
  <em>
    <span>there,</span>
  </em>
  <span> really.” Geralt muttered. “She told me I was being very stupid and I felt like I was twelve years old back at Kaer Morhen, being told I was the worst fighter in existence by pretty much anyone with a mouth. Witchers tend to gang up on you.” Geralt rolled his eyes. “She said you’d returned to the coast, and that I’d better go catch my heart before it drowned.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was drinking quite heavily.” Jaskier ceded. “Wait, she called me your heart?” He leaned over Geralt with a smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, four times slower than it should be.” Geralt rolled his eyes. Jaskier squawked and tried to wrestle him down onto the bed, but it creaked rather ominously. He finally stopped when Geralt caught his hand, pressing it to his chest over where that heart beat. “And steadfast. Cautious in simple things, reckless in dangerous things. Aged, broken. Unending. True. Strong. Brave, so brave.” Geralt’s voice fell into a whisper as he spoke, eyes never leaving Jaskier’s face. Jaskier recognized the look on his face from many years of admiring it from afar, noticing for the first time how Geralt’s eyes crinkled in at the edges when he tried not to smile. He was being serious, but vulnerable. “Be careful with it, Jaskier.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She told me that too.” he whispered. “In Mahakam. She told me to take care of your heart.” he gently lifted away a piece of white hair in Geralt’s eyes. “I will strive to protect it, if you’ll let me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It will be difficult.” Geralt warned, that strain of self-hatred blooming in his chest again. “It’s not a heart that warms to songs and sonnets, Jaskier. Some days it does nothing more than beat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then I will love you twice as much those days, and I will love you all others as easily and deliberately as breathing.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>“Will you still play?” Geralt asked, as Jaskier secured his lute case to Pegasus’ saddle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course I’ll still play, Geralt!” He gasped, affronted. “What kind of question. ‘Will I still play’. I swear Geralt, if I didn’t still feel you in my body, I’d say you don’t know me at all!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Geralt hummed, and mulled it over quite a bit. He had never asked Jaskier about his life, and had only taken bits and pieces of information from the journals he’d read, written.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jaskier.” he said, but his voice came out a lot softer than he’d intended it to be. “Jaskier.” he tried again, more strength to his voice. “I realize now how...unfair I’ve been, not just in our relationship, but in...so many other things.” Jaskier was looking at him with a strange expression, completely still from where he’d been about to step up into the saddle. Geralt kept talking. “I’d like things to be different than they were. I don’t want things to go back to how they used to be. You don’t deserve that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Geralt, you keep talking about what I do or don’t deserve.” Jaskier said. “I think that’s for me to decide.” he walked around to where Geralt held Roach’s bridle tightly in his hands. He rested two scarred hands atop them. “If you’re unsure about anything, just ask me. You just have to ask me, and I’ll answer. Anything.” He brought those hands up and pressed gentle kisses to the knuckles there.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jaskier.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Geralt.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank </span>
  <em>
    <span>you.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so so so so so much!</p>
<p>Special thanks to my darling lovely dear heart for listening to me complain about the "science of a good apology" for approximately four days straight. You light up my world, babe.</p>
<p>Please show your thanks to @janthonyashtoreth for playing comma-slayer, grammar defender, and all-around best beta. You are so important in my life, more than words can say. &lt;3</p>
<p>Thanks again to @Avenger_Lock whose beautiful comments on the previous work in this series seriously motivated me to get my ass in gear to write this entire second work. Thank you so much.</p>
<p>To all of the beautiful people leaving comments on EVERY CHAPTER, I love you all so dearly. I hope you all stick around and subscribe to this series, you lift me up so much &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments and kudos encouraged, I see and cherish every single one &lt;3 Follow me on <a href="https://kaermorons.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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